Open letter to public prosecutor Eric Holder

Mr. Holder

This letter is to demand to accept the motion presented by René González, Cuban antiterrorist imprisoned in the United States, and allowed to travel to Cuba for two weeks to visit and be with his seriously ill and his family.

Rene met the October 7, 2011 his unjust sentence of 13 years. U.S. authorities forced him to stay for 3 years under supervised release scheme.

Truth and justice must go hand in hand, Ryan remains in the cruelest of the bulls, not shackle but tied hand and foot, with danger every day to your life.

Charter attached to his brother Rene Robert, who calls for solidarity and reflection. We are pending.

Feb 24, 2012

My Brother for life,

I never thought I would have to write this letter. We share the same lack of enthusiasm for letter writing, a fact clearly demonstrated during our respective internationalist missions and – more conclusively – in the unique experience of the last 20 years. In other words, only conditions as extraordinary as the present ones induce me to write.

Under normal conditions, these things should said be face to face, and a lot of them wouldn’t even need to be said at all. You have enough on your plate with this pitched battle against a disease that is trying to devour you, without on top of that having to face a human ailment that is much more lethal: hatred.

The hatred that stops me from reciprocating all the efforts, with that well-deserved hug we Five would like to give you.

The hatred that does not let me laugh with you at the each of the happenings that spring from your immense courage.

The hatred that obliges me to guess, by the sound of your breathing on the telephone, the fluctuating fortunes of the battle you are waging.

The hatred that causes me the anguish of not being able to share in the caring for all those who love you; and which stops me from being there to support Sary and the boys.

The hatred that deprives me of seeing our nephews and nieces grow up; they have become men and women in the last few years. How proud you must be of your children!

The hatred that prevents me from simply embracing my brother. That obliges me to follow from an absurd and distant confinement a process of which I should be part, like anyone else who has served a prison sentence, in itself quite long enough and imposed precisely out of hatred; but for him, still insufficient.

What can one do against so much hatred? What we have always done, I suppose: love life and fight for it, both for our own and for that of others. Confront every obstacle with a smile on our lips, an apt witticism, and with that optimism instilled in us from childhood. Press on, tough it out, never give in, always together shoulder to shoulder, however hard they try to isolate me from family and friends, to punish all of us in that way.

Today I’ve been remembering those great days from your time as a sportsman. You in the pool and us up in the stands, shouting your name as you swam. Our voices reached you intermittently, when you raised your head to breathe. You told us how sometimes you heard your whole name, other times just the beginning or the end. So we trained ourselves to wait ’till your head was out of the water and then all shout your name in unison. You couldn’t see us, but the din we made told you we were with you, even if we couldn’t intervene directly in the fierce struggle taking place in the swimming pool.

History is now repeating itself. While you are committing all your efforts to this struggle, I am here cheering you on, now together with the family that you had not then yet built. Although you can’t see me, you know I’m there, together with yours, who are also mine. You know that this brother, from his strange exile, from the sorrow of forced separation, under the most absurd conditions of supervised freedom, based on the dignity of his status as a Cuban patriot (like you) and on the affection nurtured by the ties of kinship and shared experience that unite us, is and always will be with you. Every time you raise your head, you’ll be able to hear me shouting, together with my nephews and nieces.

Breathe, brother, breathe!!

Your brother who loves you,

Rene

Who is René González

René González is an American citizen, born in Chicago, Illinois, on August 13, 1956. As a son of Cuban immigrants he returned to Cuba in 1961. Rene is a pilot and flight instructor. Married to Olga Salanueva since 1983, they have two daughters: 23 year-old Irma González Salanueva, and 9 year-old Ivette González Salanueva.

From 1977 to 1979 he participated as an internationalist combatant in the war of liberation in Angola and against apartheid.

In 1990 Rene returned to the United States, and in 1996 his wife and elder daughter joined him in Miami. His daughter Ivette was born in that city in 1998.

On September 12, 1998 René was arrested. He was held in preventative custody for thirty-three months before the sentence was passed and was isolated in special cell, known as “the hole”, designed for prisoners with serious disciplinary problems for almost 17 months prior to the trial and for 48 days after the verdict was passed. In February 2003 he was once again held in solitary confinement for almost a month without any reason being given.

His trial, held at the United States District Court Southern District of Florida, under Case No. 98-721-Cr-Lenard(S), began on November 26, 2000 and concluded on June 8, 2001, in Miami, Florida, home to over half a million Cuban exiles. Miami is a community with a long history of hostility toward the Cuban government – a record that a federal appellate court in the United States later described as a “perfect storm” of prejudice, precluding a fair trial.

Following his conviction, on December 14, 2001 he was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment on the charges of General Conspiracy and Conspiracy to act as a non- registered foreign agent.

After the trial, Rene was transferred to a maximum-security prison in Loretto, Pennsylvania, before being moved to McKean Federal Correctional Institution in the same state. Later, he was taken to Edgefield FCI in South Carolina, and finally to Marianna FCI, Florida, where he is served until Oct. 7, 2011.

Despite repeated appeals, Judge Joan Lenard ruled that he must stay in Florida for the next three years under conditions of “supervised release.”

Since the deportation of Rene’s wife, Olga Salanueva, in 2000, the government of the United States has denied visa permits to her on 7 occasions.

source: http://www.thecuban5.org/

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