Lawyer mulls charges against US for violating Cuban Girl´s right

Havana, Jul 21 (Prensa Latina) Puerto Rican lawyer Rafael Rodriguez, of the Rosenberg Fund for Children (RFC), is contemplating charges against the US Federal Government for violating the rights of six-year-old Cuban girl Ivette Gonzalez.

The girl, younger daughter of Rene Gonzalez, one of the five Cubans political prisoners currently in US jails, has been unable to visit her father in prison, because, as a minor, she should go with her mother, to whom the United States has repeatedly denied an entry visa.

Rodriguez, a board member at RFC, told Radio Havana Cuba that, according to US jurisprudence, Rene Gonzalez could press charges for a case of violation of his right to intimate association, recently acknowledged by the US Supreme Court as a fundamental right protected by the Constitution’s first amendment.

The lawyer added that in line with US justice, the Government’s agencies have no right to intentionally destroy the unity of family.

What is happening here is something similar to what happens in cases like the Ethel and Julius Rosenberg case, in the respect that family relationships and visits and access to family members by prisoners is used as a way of torture and as a political tool, indicated Rodriguez.

Rene, together with Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labanino, Fernando Gonzalez and Gerardo Hernandez, internationally known as the Cuban Five, had managed to penetrate Miami-based terrorist groups planning attacks on Cuba, and gathered intelligence on their plans.

But despite their hard evidence on the issue, the FBI arrested them in 1998. They were later sentenced to terms ranging from 15 years to life imprisonment, after being subject to a highly questionable trial, on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage.