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• 11 / 15 / 2009

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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his US peer, Barack Obama, to release the five Cuban anti-terrorists held in US jails for 11 years. "President Obama, set those men free, act before the eyes of the world with ethics, policy and morality," Chavez sustained around midnight, after granting the Simon Bolivar Order, first class, to the Five, in the hands of their relatives.

Rene Gonzalez, Gerardo Hernandez, Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labanino, and Fernando Gonzalez have remained in US jails since September 12, 1998 for infiltrating counterrevolutionary organizations based in Florida, to avoid terror acts against Cuba.

When granting the high decoration at the Caracas Municipal Theater, the Venezuelan president noted "there is no single proof of alleged espionage charges against them."

He also called upon international organizations to pronounce on the case which, according to him, enters a new chapter in which the Venezuelan people should do even more.

This cause, Chavez highlighted, must be taken to all places of the world, to encourage all governments to contribute even more.

The Case of the Cuban Five is almost unknown to the world.

Meanwhile, Cuban parliament President Ricarco Alarcon pointed out that

for Obama to be a president of change towards Latin America, he should start authorizing the release of the Five and the extradition of Cuban-American terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela.

After ten years, the Atlanta Court of Appeals recognized those men did not send or process national security information.

The US mainstream media is practically unfamiliar with this case, Alarcon told Prensa Latina during a press conference last Tuesday at the Venezuelan Parliament headquarters in Caracas.

Source: Prensa Latina