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Actor/Director Tells Media Secrets Kept From Americans About 'Spy' Prison Release This Week

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Media silence about one of the worst legal abuses in United States history, Fernando González of the Cuban Five released from prison this week, and painting him as a dangerous spy, instead of a human rights defender, who risked his life to save Americans and Cubans, has prompted outrage as far away as Sweden where an actor/director exposed related media secrets kept from Americans.

Thousands of Cubans rallied at University of Havana for a concert Saturday night to give a hero’s welcome to the second of five “intelligence agents” to return to the island after completing long prison terms in the United States,” Fox News reports in its article, calling him a spy in its article title. 

The university steps were packed for the concert that featured nearly a dozen musical acts, including headliners and popular salsa act Los Van Van. The crowd gathered to honor and celebrate the release of falsely imprisoned Cuban Five member Fernando Gonalez after a deliberate mistrial and 17 years in prison.

The merrymakers knew what too few Americans do about the five, or Americans might have held massive celebrations, too. They’d also know about something major slated to happen next week that greatly impacts their lives.

“I publicly reiterate my infinite gratitude for these 15 years of support and struggle that I know will not cease until Gerardo, Ramon and Tony have returned,” Cuban Five member Gonzalez, who walked out of an Arizona prison Thursday, said about three of the five still behind bars.

From Sweden With Love

Due to obscene media silence, censoring truth behind Gonzalez and the four others of the Cuban Five, in Sweden, a group of human rights advocates said they evoked the “humble grandeur of an essential in the struggle for the freedom of the Five,” the late journalist/filmmaker Saul Landau. 

Passing through Stockholm, Saul met the Swedish cultural personality, actor/director Etienne Glaser.

Landau, an American journalist, filmmaker and commentator, was also a professor emeritus at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. There he taught history and digital media.

Landau was born in the Bronx, New York in 1936. He died in Almeda, California on September 9, 2013

Wikipedia has this to say about the multi-award winning Landau:

Landau authored 14 books, produced and directed over 50 documentary films, wrote editorial columns on his blog, and had articles posted in magazines and journals including Huffington Post.

Cuban diplomat Ricardo Alarcon, said Saul Landau is a “a real combatant with no other weapons than his talent and intellectual integrity” while awarding him the Medal of Friendship in 2013.

Landau was a fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. and a senior fellow and former director of the Transnational Institute in Amsterdam.

He received an Emmy for his film Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang (1980), that he co-directed with Academy Award-winning filmmaker Haskell Wexler. He won the Edgar Allan Poe Award 1981 for “Best Fact Crime” for Assassination on Embassy Row (with John Dinges; Pantheon 1980) about the murder of TNI Director Orlando Letelier and their colleague and friend Ronnie Karpen-Moffitt. He was given the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award for his life’s contribution to human rights and also received the Bernado O’Higgins award.

In the early 1960s, he was a member of the San Francisco Mime Troupe and wrote the play “The Minstrel Show.” At that time he was also working as a film distributor.

Landau donated his Latin American-related films and papers to the University of California, Riverside Libraries in 2005.

He frequently appeared on radio and TV shows.

Gore Vidal said, “Saul Landau is a man I love to steal ideas from.”

Landau met with actor/director Etienne Glaser, who is among Swedish endorsers of the Commission of Inquiry into the Case of the Cuban Five, and has “confronted with courage the intentional silence and malicious misrepresentations of the official Swedish media,” says the Swedish Free the Five Committee.

Glaser is among dozens of award-winning film industry professionals and high-profile human rights leaders around the world trying to tell Americans about the amazing story of five men who tried to save American and Cuban lives from terrorism and were imprisoned for doing so.

“(Glaser) raised his voice with a debate article that the morning paper Dagens Nyheter refused to publish. Undoubtedly, the pen of Etienne reminds us of Saul’s.”

‘One of the worst legal abuses in the U.S.’

The text below was written by Etienne Glaser, slightly edited for brevity: 

Imagine that a small note can make one so frantic!

The journalistic task involves constant inadequacy. It is impossible to satisfy the need of all suffering people to describe their stories in a fair manner. With this in mind, I read in today’s Dagens Nyheter a short note entitled “Acclaimed Cuba Prisoner released”. Acclaimed yes, but not by someone at Dagens Nyheter!

Factual background not mentioned in the notice from TT-AFP is that a large international tribunal will meet on 7-8 March in London, with senior lawyers and politicians from India, South Africa, France and several other countries, including United States (Ramsey Clark; former US Attorney General) and supported by cultural figures, such as Nadine Gordimer, Gunter Grass, John le Carré, Noam Chomsky and others.

What is it they will highlight and discuss?

For over four decades right-wing Cuban exiles in Miami in association with co-thinkers in the United States have performed a series of bomb attacks on flights to Cuba and against tourist hotels in Cuba. Many deaths and many injuries have been the result. Cuba tried diplomatically and through the UN to stop terrorist activity but without success.

Because of this, five Cuban men decided to infiltrate these groups in Miami. They killed no one, they threatened no one, and they injured no one. They succeeded beyond expectations in their task and the Cuban government gave their extensive documentation to the FBI.

U.S. government showed no signs of wanting to do something, and the final answer from the U.S. came when the five men were arrested on charges of espionage. They were held in solitary confinement for 17 months, yes, you read it right, for 17 months waiting to be brought to court.

This is just the beginning of a story about one of the worst legal abuses in the U.S. The Cuban Five were convicted in a court in Miami, and it did not help that the lawyers asked to have the trial moved to a place where the jury was not primarily influenced by Castro-hating Cuban exiles. But no, it had to be right in Miami, and the Cuban Five were convicted (that was predetermined) to grotesquely long sentences, several of them got life sentences, the shortest sentence being the one of René González – 15 years.

There are U.S. lawyers and politicians who clearly have stated that the Cuban Five were not guilty of any crime and did not threaten U.S. security. But in general, the US public opinion knows nothing about this Justice scandal. They know nothing about the “acclaimed” Cuban Five.

Maybe Dagens Nyheter has written about the Cuban Five and the international movement that has grown ever stronger and bigger and now led in London to the Commission of Inquiry into the Case of the Cuban Five, which a group of Swedes, lawyers and other people involved in human rights issues, will attend.

The small post today in Dagens Nyheter is however an unusual qualifying example of misinformation.

But, dear journalists, it can be easily amended.

Etienne Glaser

Musicians, including rocker David Blanco and troubadors Vicente Feliu and Gerardo Alfonso sang in front of a huge crowd of Cubans in honor of the hero. They waved Cuban flags, held signs in support of the Cuban Five and danced in joyous unity for hours.
 
Where was the American celebration of equal joy and gratitude last night? It did not exist. Why not? America’s media misinformation – and even worse, disinformation.
 
Sources: ICFC5, Etienne Glaser for Swedish Free the Five Committee - also available in Spanish, YouTube. Free The Cuban Five
 
Follow Deborah Dupre on Twitter @DeborahDupre



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    Total 6 comments
    • willhart

      Ah, such is American justice these days, not very blind…

    • paul brown

      The Cubans are beautiful people, and US treatment of them is unforgivable.

      • Arcturus

        I think Castro started it.

        • paul brown

          Fulgencio Batista, the dictator who was overthrown by Castro, started it.

    • Dustdevil

      LOL, what a joke.

      Hey, tell you what, why don’t you go and ‘infiltrate’ the White House a few times. Maybe ‘infiltrate’ an Air Force One flight. No problem, no fight, no trouble, just maybe a pen and a note pad.

      Let’s see how much time you get in prison for doing this.

      See, you can cry all you want to, but if you INFILTRATE A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION and you are not already recognized as a ‘legitimate agent’ authorized to do so (police, fed, military or just confidential informer), then YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW!

      It’s no different than riding around with your friend, who then kills someone, and you don’t tell anyone. YOU ARE AN ACCOMPLICE! To have him go nuts one time and do it, then you get out of the car and call the police to turn him in, you walk free-and-clear. To ride with him and do it, and then another night ride with him and he does it again, and again – and you still haven’t called the police, and you keep riding with him as he kills people. DEAL WITH IT PEOPLE, YOUR FRIEND IS A KILLER YOU AREN’T TURNING IN!

      This was the whole case against the ‘Cuban 5′ to start with. They claimed ‘we’ve infiltrated a terrorist group’ only after they were caught, to save their necks – and in the end, they were prosecuted for it, as accomplices.

      This whole event actually led in part, to the laws we have in America now, that to be a party to a crime makes you as guilty of the crime, as if you had done the crime yourself.

      As for this article – I AM SICK AND TIRED of special interest writers trying to make ‘their side’ look so innocent, when in fact, they aren’t. I am sure a lot of Muslim writers justified Mohammed Attah, too. It didn’t make him innocent, it just showed their schemes to ‘spin it’. Same here.

      • paul brown

        You’re somewhat off base here. Many Cubans had tried to get the US government, which was the terrorist organization in this case, to stop downing airplanes, assassinations, bombings, and other acts of terror through the actions of right-wing Cubans mostly in Florida. Since the US was behind these acts of terror in the first place, they didn’t respond. The Cuban Five, who the Cuban government admits were spies, got the goods on the terrorists, and were not in any way accomplices of the CIA-supported terrorists. One was accused of murder. After a questionable trial, they were given very harsh sentences which included prolonged solitary confinement, considered torture under international law. The world condemns the US for this.
        Cuba has been subjected to a 50-year illegal embargo by the US, and the US has invaded their country, and tried to assassinate their leaders many times. The world condemns the US for this, another example of our rogue status.
        Ms Dupre is indeed a special interests writer. Her special interest is human rights, regardless of the victims or the perps. Sorry you’re sick and tired of people seeking justice.
        Wikipedia has an interesting article on the Cuban Five, although I can’t vouch for its accuracy.

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