letter of june to Obama

Mr President Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W.

Washington DC 20500

Mr President,

Barely a month ago, on the radio station Radio Mambi, Orlando Bosch’s widow called for a celebration of the first anniversary of the death of her husband, who had died on April 27th 2011. Her call was received loud and clear, as several hours later, on the morning of Friday April 27th, a violent terrorist attack pulverized the offices of Airline Brokers, in Miami, a company that organizes flights to Cuba. Last March, this charter plane company had been chosen by the Archbishop Thomas Wenski to take several hundred pilgrims to see Pope Benoit XVI in Cuba.

Orlando Bosch had been the head of the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). Created in 1976 at the behest of the C.I.A., this terrorist commando squad had, during a decade, been one of the most violent of these organizations on the American continent. It was responsible for, among other terrorist attacks, the one against Cubana Airlines Flight 455; when it exploded in the middle of its flight, on October 6th 1976, 73 persons were killed. The two masterminds of this terrorist attack were Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles. The former was given grace in 1990, the latter has still not been judged for this crime.

The Avispa Network that the five Cuban agents, Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, Ramón Labañino and René González were part of, were keeping a watch on the activities of Miami terrorist groups, so as to prevent other crimes of this sort from happening.

When the Cuban Five were arrested in 1998, they had just discovered that terrorist attacks were being prepared against planes flying to Cuba. Could you imagine, Mr President that these Cubans would let such barbaric actions happen without reacting? Without your country being informed? Nevertheless, the Cuban Five were condemned, in 2001, by a Miami court, to extremely lengthy prison sentences.

To accuse someone using the formulation “under the intention of”, clears the way for anything and everything possible. Thus, it’s enough to influence the jury, to pay off the reporters, to fabricate prosecution witnesses and to choose the right court of law, and presto! There you have it; innocent people find themselves with heavy prison sentences!

The jury members declared the Cuban Five guilty of all charges, without even asking a single question. This has never been seen in a court case lasting seven months.

One of Florida’s most fierce and bitter personalities against the Cuban Five is the Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros Lehtinen, who has gone to great lengths to have a pardon granted to Orlando Bosch by President Bush, and then later to gather funds to pay Luis Posada Carriles’ lawyers.

Luis Posada Carriles, an ex-member of the C.I.A., after having been on the run for years, was arrested in 2005 by the United States immigration department police. He was held in Miami, and then released in 2007 under a $350,000 bail, while waiting for his verdict.

After a travesty of a trial in 2011 at El Paso, Texas, Luis Posada Carriles, who was accused only of having lied concerning the conditions of his illegal entry into the United States, left the courthouse as free as a bird. Nevertheless, on November 15th 2007, the Human Rights Subcommittee of the United States House of Representatives had established his responsibility for several terrorist actions including, as a matter of fact, the one against Cubana Airlines Flight 455.

In an interview in the New York Times that came out on July 12th1998, Posada Carriles declared, “The C.I.A. taught us lots of things – explosives and how to use them, how to kill, bomb and sabotage. When Cubans work for the C.I.A., they call them patriots.”

If you still have doubts, Mr President, of the dangerousness of these individuals, read the interview accorded by Orlando Bosch to Andy Robinson, the correspondent for a Catalan newspaper, La Vanguardia, and published on August 16th 2006. Here are several extracts:

To the newspaper reporter who asks him:

“Not long ago, ten or so years ago, there were terrorist attacks carried out against several hotels in Havana…”, here is what Bosch responded:

“That was the work of Luis Posada. He paid a Salvadorian. People in Central America, what with their extreme hunger, you give them $100 and they’ll do anything. This guy came into Cuba with his material in a television set. He placed three bombs, one in a hotel that killed an Italian, another in a cellar in Medio, and he stayed there instead of getting out!”

“Did this have any after-effects?” asked the reporter, to which Bosch responded:

“Yes, there was one. At first, they wondered if the bomb hadn’t been placed by Castro’s forces. Here, you cannot imagine the shit hitting the fan over there at that time. The bombs created terrible after-effects in Cuba. People thought that it was the work of Castro’s Army…”

And when, a little while later, the reporter asked:

“And the Cubana Airlines plane with 73 passengers aboard, it was for you a legitimate target?”, here is Bosch’s response:

“For me, it is a wartime target. There are many things that I cannot tell you. But these actions were wartime actions. And that plane was a warplane. It was carrying North Koreans, people from Guyana. All of them communists. The sportsmen were taking back five gold medals in fencing. Cuba stood out in boxing, but not in fencing. This was giving glory to Castro. We agreed, at Santo Domingo (when the commando squad, the CORU, was being created), that anything coming from Cuba likely to render glory to Fidel should run the same risks as we were running combating tyranny.”

Now you see with what cynicism these assassins sacrificed an entire team of young Cuban fencers.

The Cuban Five were only fighting against terrorist actions committed by such individuals. They are victims of the greatest injustice.

One more time, I am asking you, Mr President, to do something to finally give them back the liberty that they’ve been deprived of, for more than thirteen years now.

Please receive, Mr President, the expression of my most sincere humanistic sentiments.

Jacqueline Roussie

Translated by William Peterson

Copies sent to: Mrs. Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Kathryn Ruemmler, Janet Napolitano, to Mr. Harry Reid, Eric Holder, John F. Kerry, Pete Rouse, Donald, Rick Scott, and to Charles Rivkin, United States Ambassador in France.