Good afternoon. My name is Gloria La Riva and I'm the coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, an organization which was formed in the United States within days after the convictions of the Cuban 5 in June 2001, because from day one of their arrests we believed them to be innocent and they still are today.

Three years ago here in Atlanta, the defense attorneys filed their briefs for the Cuban Five anti-terrorists' appeals. Twenty-seven months after those first appeals were filed, and 17 months after the oral arguments were heard in Miami, a 93-page ruling by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned unanimously all the convictions and sentences of Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, and René González.

That decision on August 9 was comprehensive and it confirmed what the whole world knows, that the atmosphere created in Miami by the existence of terrorist organizations which operate in Miami with impunity, made it impossible for the Cuban Five to receive a fair, unbiased jury trial.

And yet three years after the first appeals, the case of the Cuban Five finds itself before the 11th Circuit court again.

We are very thankful for the deep dedication that the legal team has shown, and we are hopeful that the full panel of the court will reaffirm the Aug. 9 decision, so that our Cuban brothers can move closer to freedom, and be home with their loved ones, so that they are completely exonerated.

But we are also here to say: On behalf of the many tens of thousands of active supporters around the world, that it is time to free the Cuban Five, immediately and without delay.

How can the U.S. government justify holding five men, who never harmed one individual, on the contrary, who saved lives? And how can Washington justify letting terrorists run free in Miami, while it sentences anti-terrorists to life terms? The U.S. treatment of the Cuban Five has been politically motivated from the start. That is why forces all over the world, from the 110 British parliamentarians, to our National Committee here in the U.S., to Nobel Prize recipients, and to the very heart of Miami, where hundreds of courageous Cuban people, have had forums, raised funds, and people around the world, have declared the year 2006 as the most critical yet in the freedom struggle for our five Cuban heroes.

We call them heroes because anywhere else in the world, except for Miami and the White House, they would be considered heroes for peaceably and effectively stopping terrorist violence, terrorist bombings, terrorist threats against innocent civilians.

The law is on our side, justice is on our side. And we know that the American people oppose terrorism without reservation. Once they know about the Cuban Five, we know that they will also demand their freedom.

President Bush, whose administration has vengefully persecuted the Five, must let these men go free. We call on you, President Bush, to free Gerardo, Ramon, Antonio, René and Fernando now.

Extradite Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela. Stop harboring the most dangerous terrorist in the western hemisphere on U.S. soil.

I want to announce, that to break through the media and government blockade of this case, the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five has launched recently a freedom fund of $250,000 and we're already one-fourth of the way. We are proud of the fact that Cubans in Miami are the largest fundraisers to date, raising over $26,000 in less than two months. And they're working-class people, for whom that money is a sacrifice.

Through flyers, publicity, newspaper ads, protests and forums, we will make the Cuban Five a household word.

And just as important, we call on the State Department to immediately grant entry visas to the wives of two of the Cuban Five, Adriana Pérez, wife of Gerardo Hernández, and Olga Salanueva, who is married to René González.

Today is February 14. It's Valentine's Day. And an eight-year-old girl, Ivette, needs to see her dad, she needs to hold him, she needs to hear his voice in person. They need to see their families, and we call on the government immediately to let them enter the U.S. to see René and Gerardo.

I want to send a special greeting to our Brothers, the Cuban 5, and tell them from all the supporters who were in the courtroom, and from all those who are listening around the world, Happy Valentine's Day brothers.

We will hear now from our first speaker, Kurt De Loor. We have a number of foreign guests, distinguished parliamentarians, and jurists from a number of countries. I will name them later. And also a very distinguished retired judge from Detroit.

Kurt de Loor is a member of the Flemish Parliament in Belgium, and he is responsible for a declaration, a very new declaration on the violation of human rights in the case of the Cuban 5, that was signed by 32 Belgian MPs, the members of the Flemish Parliament, the Belgian parliament, and the House of Representative and the Senate and one member of the European Parliament.

KURT DE LOOR: Good afternoon, everybody. As a Belgian member of the Parliament, more specifically of the Flemish Parliament, I am glad to be here to support the Cuban Five, and with my presence, I will support them. It is important for the Cuban Five, for this case, that they have a fair trial. I want politicians and the political world to know what happened in this case in Miami. They didn't get a fair trial, their human rights were violated, and it became a political process. The United States doesn't want to create a lot of communication about it. Yesterday when we came from the airport in a cab, the cab driver asked us what are you two Belgians doing in Atlanta? And when we said we came to fight for the Cuban Five, he didn't even know about it. He reads each day, but the government doesn't want to say a lot about it. That is why with my presence, I want to be here because I want to do a lot of communication about the double standard of the United States. On the one hand, they do an international war against terror and on the other hand, they put five innocent people in prison, five people who tried to avoid terrorism against their own country.

I think also that the international community has a huge responsibility in this. So, in Belgium we made a declaration that was signed by 32 members of Parliament, the Flemish Parliament, the House of Representatives, the Senate and also one member of the European Parliament, because we want the Cuban Five to get a fair trial and we want to stop the violation of human rights.

I already have and in the future will take my political responsibility for this.
Thank you.

GLR: Thank you very much Kurt.

Among our guests here today are Eberhard Schultz, who is from the Berlin Bar Association, and the International League of Human Rights in Berlin and the Republican Lawyers Guild, Edith Flamant, who is a Belgian attorney who also attended the oral arguments in Miami in 2004, Father Geoffrey Bottoms, who is leader of the British Campaign to Free the Cuban Five, who is on a tour of the United States with the film Mission Against Terror, along with Bernie Dwyer of Ireland and co-director of the documentary, who just concluded for example, a event of 500 people in Boston. We have Fabio Marcelli, an Italian attorney representing the International Association of Defense [sic, Democratic] Lawyers, we have Judge Claudia Morcom, a longtime civil rights activist from Detroit, Michigan and judge of Wayne County Circuit Court from 1983 to 1998, when she retired. She continues to be very active in a number of international human rights committees, and is part of the IADL, and Carlos Zamorano, who is a very well-known and distinguished attorney from Argentina, who also attended the oral arguments in March, 2004.

GLR: We will hear now from Leonard Weinglass, who, for those who were in the hearing today, know that he argued the case, along with appeals attorney Richard Klugh. Leonard Weinglass represents Antonio Guerrero who is serving life in Florence, Colorado, and is a longtime renowned civil rights attorney, who has represented Angela Davis, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Daniel Ellsberg in the Pentagon Papers, among a number of other cases. Please welcome Leonard Weinglass.

LEONARD WEINGLASS: Good afternoon. I'm pleased to say that the case today received a fair hearing here in Atlanta before a court which obviously knew the record of the case, was interested in the legal issues that were raised, and I'm sure will give this case a full and fair consideration.

But we are mindful of the fact that the last time we argued this case before a panel of this court, three judges in a unanimous 93-page decision found that the case would have to be reversed because the case represented a perfect storm of prejudice against the Five Cubans who were charged.

I believe that this court will not convert that perfect storm of prejudice into a bright and sunny day of neutrality in Miami, because anyone examining the 119 volumes of transcript, in what was the longest trial in the United States at the time that it occurred, plus the 800 exhibits, over 20,000 pages, will reach the same conclusion.

This case has been examined not only by three judges of the circuit who reached that conclusion, but by five judges of the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Those five judges in May of this year [2005] also found that the Five did not receive a fair trial in Miami. In other words, this case has been reviewed by no fewer than eight judges, three in this circuit, five in the UN. All eight agreed unanimously that the Five did not receive a fair trial.

So as we stand now before 13 judges, which includes two of the original judges, we feel hopeful and even optimistic, that finally, finally after seven years, there will be a recognition that the Five did not have a fair process, and that their convictions will be reversed. Thank you for coming today.

GLR: Thank you Leonard.

We will now hear from our last speaker and then we will have questions and answers. If we have time, we'd like to hear a few words from some of our foreign guests.

Our next speaker is Andres Gomez, who has lived in Miami, a Cuban progressive activist who is the director of the Antonio Maceo Brigade, and Areíto Digital magazine. He also is also one of the leading activists of the Alianza Martiana, which is an alliance of Cuban organizations in Miami, and a number of our Cuban friends are also with us. Andrés is also Miami coordinator of the National Campaign to Free the Cuban Five.

ANDRES GOMEZ: Thank you for being here today. I am here on behalf of a number of Cuban American organizations in Miami, who support the end of the policy of aggression by the United States against the Cuban people in place for the last 47 years. We favor the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba in order to solve the outstanding differences between both governments. We favor the end of the trade embargo against the Cuban people, that has caused so much hardship for the Cuban people.

We are here to demand the end of U.S. support for terrorist organization of the Cuban right wing that from U.S. soil, have planned and conducted terrorist attacks against the Cuban people on the island for the last 47 years, and have also been responsible for assassinations, and other terrorist attacks against those that oppose your methods and political aims in the United States.

We are also here to denounce the tactics of the extreme rightwing, that says that the position of the defense—that it is impossible, or it was impossible to conduct a fair trial in Miami under the conditions that existed in Miami, and that exist in Miami. In the case of the Cuban 5—to say it is racist, that is a lie.

It isn't a question of racism, it is a question that the Cubans and Cuban Americans in Miami are the first victims of terrorism conducted by extreme rightwing organizations. They are unable to pronounce themselves freely on subjects related to Cuba because of the threat of violence against them. This is not a supposition. Hundreds of terrorist acts have been committed by those organizations in the United States, specifically in Miami. In order to substantiate this, I ask you to go to the classified U.S. government documents, FBI documents, on these activities by Cuban rightwing terrorists in the United States during the past 47 years. And it is right there. U.S. government documents substantiate what I am saying today.

If it would have been possible to have a fair trial in Miami for the Cuban 5, why did then the federal district attorney, less than a year after they said that a fair trial was possible in Miami on this question, reverse themselves in the Ramirez case and said that it was impossible to conduct such a fair trial in Miami, in regards to the question of the demand by the employee of the immigration department in the case of Elián González.

Not only that. Why has the district attorney's office demanded that the trial against Santiago Alvarez and Osvaldo Mitat, who are Cuban American terrorists, be conducted in Broward county, in Ft. Lauderdale, and not in Miami? Simply because they know that they cannot obtain a fair decision in Miami, which is the contention of the defense and the basis for the decision of the three-judge panel in August, when they annulled the trial and sentences and asked for a new trial.

Thank you very much.

GLR: We will now entertain any questions from the media.

I think we'd like to hear from some of our guests. Eberhard Schultz, would you please come up and say a few words. They traveled a long distance and some even made it through the New York storm.

EBERHARD SCHULTZ: Thank you very much. I'm glad to take the opportunity to support the fight for a new trial for the Cuban Five. I came over from Germany for the second time. Last time the hearing was in Miami, I found it very convincing, the arguments of the Defense. As we have seen and heard, the decision was very clear and very unanimous. Let me stress one point. From the international standard of human rights, it is impossible to keep somebody, even with the charge of murder, longer than let's say, six years in prison. I have been a defense lawyer in a case before the European Court of Human Rights. The charge was ring leadership of terrorist organization and murder. My client was convicted to six years. Afterwards, we went to the European Court of Human Rights, who said it is impossible to keep him in prison for these six years, even if he is guilty. And this is not clear yet in his case. International human rights standards demand that the Cuban 5 be freed immediately.

Thank you.

We'd like to hear from Fabio Marcelli.

FABIO MARCELLI: I am here on behalf of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers of Democ, which is an international association of lawyers which is present in more than 80 countries all over the world, I am personally Italian, researching international law in Rome. We have two main concerns about this trial. The first one is that the human rights of the convicted Cuban Five have been violated, because no fair trial has been given to them. This was acknowledged by the recent decision of the appeals panel in August, and it's now clear to everyone. We think it is time to free the Cuban Five, because we my colleague Eberhard Schultz, it is not possible to keep people in prison for an indefinite period of time. It's time to free them to join their families.

The second concern we have is of a more general nature, regarding the struggle of terrorism. We think the international community should unite in struggle against terrorism in every form. Therefore, we cannot understand why the United States government does not recognize that these five people were acting here in the United States in order to protect their people and their state from terrorist organizations. Why on the contrary the US government gives sometimes the impression of protecting and harbor international terrorist acting against Cuba, and also against other countries on their soil. This is in patent contradiction with the necessity to have a common struggle against terrorism in every form, which is a primary commitment of our association, the IADL. Thank you.

GLR: Some of the media wants to have individual interviews so we will end the press conference now. There will be a public meeting tonight, at Spelman College, at the Cosby Auditorium, in which community activists will be speaking about the case to the public. there is a lot of interest in it. We want to thank everyone for being here, for everyone who came to Atlanta.

In the United States, the media attention on this case has been very minimal. It certainly has international and national significance, not just Miami. So we're glad to see the press here. We want to thank Kawana Lloyd for organizing the press conference today.
Thank you very much.