Havana, Oct 18 (Prensa Latina) Relatives of the five Cuban youths illegally imprisoned in the US said that the many obstacles North American authorities are placing to visits constitute an additional punishment to their suffering.

Aurora Freijanes, wife of Fernando Gonzalez, told Trabajadores newspaper that she had only been allowed to visit her husband three times (2002, 2003 and 2004) during the six years he has served of the 19-year term he was given.

Freijanes said that families of The Five (as they are internationally known) depended on a visa granting regime, and although they were willing and fit to visit them, Washington had repeatedly delayed the trial over an up to seven-month period.

In her case and that of her husband´s mother, procedures are more complex, as they need the authorization of the US Department of State and the Oxford Prison in the state of Wisconsin, where he is jailed.

The US Federal Bureau of Prisons regulates all Cuban citizens wanting to visit a prisoner must fill out a form, cannot have a criminal record, and must have a good moral conduct.

However, she contended, in Oxford things are not like that: "each time Magali (mother of Fernando) and I pay a visit to him, after waiting for visas, we should be granted a special permit to see him."

It is clear they are violating a human right included in the International Law and the Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, she explained.

On their appeal in process, Freijanes noted that the Atlanta Court ruling was hard to predict but defense attorneys were optimistic about it.

We are fully aware this is a political trial and we cannot expect the Atlanta Court to resolve it all. We have to keep pushing for justice to be done, so the international public and the US people support us, she stressed.

Fernando Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Rene Gonzalez and Ramon Labañino were sentenced from 15 years to double life terms in a rigged and biased trial in Miami.

They gathered information on the Miami-based extreme rightwing terrorist groups to avoid further violent actions such as the blowing up of a Cuban passenger plane that left 73 dead in 1976.