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Cuban Website Slams US’ Cruel Treatment of One of the Cuban Five

CUBA, Aug 24, 2009.- The US government is cruelly maltreating Gerardo Hernandez Cordelo, one of the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters imprisoned in that country, according to a report posted on CubaDebate’s website.

Under the headline ¡Vaya manera de respetar el debido proceso! (What a way of respecting due process!), the article notes how the US administration deliberately chose the date to notify Gerardo’s wife, Adriana Perez, that she was denied, for the 10th time in 11 years, a visa to travel to the US to visit her husband in prison.

This year’s July 15th, the day of the 21st wedding anniversary of Gerardo and Adriana, she was informed by Washington's Interest Section in Havana that she was not allowed to enter the US.

Likewise, when the Supreme Court rejected the appeal to review the Cuban Five’s case that included Gerardo’s cause, the date for the announcement of such decision was also carefully chosen: June 4th, Gerardo’s birthday.

In a conversation with American journalist Saul Landau the Cuban prisoner said this treatment might be the way the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigations) found to take revenge for his position of refusing to betray Cuba.

“Depriving me of the possibility of seeing my wife is part of the same process; the interrogations, the offers for us to sell ourselves to them (FBI), the months in solitary confinement. But the plans the FBI or the administration could have had did not work out.”

Adriana has been granted only one visa in 11 years, during which she has periodically requested permission to enter the US. It turned out to be a bad joke from the Bush administration in 2002, reads the article.

“When she landed in the George Bush International Airport of Houston (Texas), she was welcomed by an FBI committee that took her fingerprints and interrogated her for 11 hours while depriving her from the right to have a lawyer or to request advice from her consular representation.”

“Afterwards, the committee revoked the visa and sent the young woman back to Cuba without letting her speak to her husband.”

In 2005 the US administration made fun of her again by denying the visa on the grounds that she was considered a possible immigrant. (Cubaminrex-AIN)

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