13) WIFE OF CUBAN FIVE PRISONER TO SPEAK IN TORONTO

            Adriana Perez, wife of one of five Cuban intelligence officers sentenced to long prison terms in the United States for their efforts to monitor violent anti‑Cuba groups in Miami, will speak at the Toronto Steelworkers Hall, 25 Cecil Street, at 6:30 pm, Saturday, April 20.

            Perez is married to Gerardo Hernandez, one of the men known as the Cuban Five. Sent to Florida in the mid‑1990s to infiltrate anti‑Castro organizations involved in a wave of terrorist activities, the five were exposed, arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit espionage. After a widely condemned trial, Hernandez and the others - Ramon Labanino, Rene Gonzalez, Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez and Fernando Gonzalez - were sentenced in 1998 to excessive jail terms in difficult conditions.

            Hernandez was given the harshest punishment, two life terms plus 15 years. Perez will speak about his case and the U.S. government's continual refusal, in violation of international standards, to allow her to visit her husband.

            A world‑wide campaign to free the Five has attracted the support of international politicians and personalities, including many in Canada. The trial and sentences have been criticized by the United Nations and various human rights organizations as unjust.

            The free event is being hosted by the United Steelworkers and the Friends of the Cuban Five.

            For more information about the case, visit www.freethe5peoplestribunal.org; or www.freethefive.org.

(The above article is from the April 1-15, 2013, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)