[NYTr] US Religious Activist Mourns Cuban Victims of Terrorism

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Agencia Cubana de Noticias (ACN)
http://ainch.ain.cu/mailman/listinfo/ingles


US Religious Activist Mourns Cuban Victims of Terrorism

Havana, Oct 9 (acn) More than 30 people gathered in prayer in front of 
the White House to honor and remember the victims of the mid-flight 
bombing of a Cuban airliner off the coasts of Barbados in 1976, a crime 
masterminded by self-confessed international terrorist Luis Posada 
Carriles.

Reverend Whit Hutchison opened the ecumenical service contrasting the 
case of the Cuban Five with the protection offered by Bush 
administration to terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.

"We come not only to commemorate the terrible loss and death caused by 
a terrorist act, but also to bring attention to the incarceration of 
five political prisoners who are not allowed contact with their 
families," he said.

Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, 
and René González, internationally known as the Cuban Five, were 
detained in 1998 for trying to prevent terrorist actions organized by 
right-wing anti-Cuba organizations based in Florida. They were charged 
with espionage and punished with extremely harsh sentences despite the 
antiterrorist nature of their mission.

Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler blasted the US government double-standard 
policy against terrorism and its open protection of Luis Posada 
Carriles.

As the ecumenical service continued, people gathered by the hundreds 
around the group of mourners.

For his part, Reverend Hagler condemned the economic, financial and 
commercial blockade imposed by Washington to the island for over 45 
years and called for the opening of bilateral relations between Cuba 
and the United States.

Reverend Lennox Yearwood walked on crutches up to the speaker's corner, 
injured after a brutal attack on Capitol Hill where police wrestled him 
to the ground for no reason at all. Reverend Yearwood led the mourners 
into prayer, enticed the mourners into a chant and stressed that: "It 
is time for us as Americans and for me as an American to stand here and 
support Cuba; it is time for us to come together as one."

The ecumenical service continued with an intervention by Carlo Gentile 
a leader of the YCL in Washington, D.C. The closing words were 
pronounced by Reverend Lazaro Garcia while Sonia Umanzor of the DC 
Metro Free the Cuban Five Committee called the names of the victims of 
Barbados crime.