letter of july to president Obama


 Mr President Obama

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue N.W.

Washington DC 20500

USA

Mr President,

Your fellow countryman Bowe Bergdahl was liberated Saturday May 31st in exchange for five former high Taliban officials, held in Guantanamo.
It is inadmissible that you have not yet taken measures to liberate the three Cubans Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, and Ramón Labañino who were, on the contrary, fighting against the terrorism that your country is practicing towards their island.

Cuba proposed to you a humanitarian exchange with your fellow countryman Alan Gross and you have still not responded favorably to its demand. Does this mean that the Taliban government seems to you to be the sort of people one can associate with, more so than the Cuban Government? It’s true that you have included Cuba on the list of countries supporting terrorism, whereas Qatar, the real sponsor for the jihadist groups, is not on it…

Do you know the fable by Jean de La Fontaine, “The Wolf and the Lamb”, in the United States?

Gerardo Hernández, the most heavily condemned of the three, has been condemned to two life prison sentences plus fifteen years. He is accused of “conspiring of attempting to commit murder” in the case of the two BTTR (Brothers to the Rescue) small planes shot down on February 24th 1996 under Cuban government orders. You know very well, Mister President, that this heavy charge attributed to Gerardo Hernández is a gross frame-up.

According to the indictment against Gerardo Hernández, the FBI was aware since 1994 of his mission to infiltrate Mafia terrorist organizations in Miami. If there had been the slightest suspicion against him concerning the BTTR planes tragedy, he would have been, without the least doubt, arrested in 1996. No one has ever been able to produce the least proof of his guilt; the prosecutor himself had demanded that the charge be taken out of Gerardo Hernández’s dossier, recognizing that it was impossible to prove.

However, as I recalled to you in my last letter, Hector Pesquera, the FBI official in charge of South Florida, had declared on January 22nd 2003 in a Radio Marti broadcast concerning the Avispa network for which Gerardo Hernández was the head, “I came here in May 1998. I was made aware of the situation. We then started to place emphasis on the fact that this investigation should not be only on questions of intelligence. The nature of this case must be transformed into a criminal investigation.” It is clear that, by hook or by crook, Gerardo Hernández had to have a crime tacked onto him.

This lamentable tragedy of the small planes would never have happened, and the young pilots would still be living, had the BTTR organization respected numerous warnings emitted by the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) on the risks that the BTTR was taking by violating time and again Cuban airspace, going as far as flying over Havana to drop thousands of tracts.

Even though he had nothing to do with this affair, but seeing as he has been credited with being partly responsible, the least you could do in the way of justice towards Gerardo Hernández would be to find out if the Cuban government was in its rights shooting down these two small planes, no matter one’s opinions on this act. Cuban radar systems indicated that they were flying over Cuban territorial waters, whereas the United States government asserts that they were in international airspace.

This object of contention could be easily cleared up by declassifying the documents concerning the tragedy, so as to check the satellite photos that your government is holding. Gerardo’s lawyers have demanded this several times, just as did Peter Schey, lawyer and president of the Los Angeles Human and Constitutional Rights Center, on March 5th 2013.

Sadly, the different United States administrations have, every time, rejected this demand, and you have done nothing, so far, to break the deadlock on this situation, Mister President. It is absurd to take into count the parole of the prosecution’s witness Bjorn Johansen, who was working as a pilot for the “Majesty of the Seas”, to localize the exact place where the planes went down. This localisation is not reliable, first because it was founded on human observation, and also because his objectivity is contestable. Bjorn Johansen was working at the time for the « Caribbean Cruises » shipping company that was financially supporting the FNCA (Féderation Nationale Cubano-Américaine), and his second in command on the ship was Peter G. Whelpton, a member of this same FNCA.

This FNCA organization is obsessed with overthrowing the Cuban government. In 1992, it set up a clandestine structure, the “paramilitary commission”, secretly charged to organize terrorist actions. It has been recognized as being behind most of the terrorist attacks against Cuba that took place between 1990 and 1998 – the exact same terrorist attacks for which the Cuban Five came to Miami to infiltrate the terrorist groups!

Mr President, don’t you think that it’s high time to put an end to the injustice done since almost sixteen years now to the Cuban Five, by freeing the three who are still behind bars in your country? A humanitarian exchange with Alan Gross is a line being thrown to you; be wise enough to catch it, for the good of your country.
Please receive, Mr. President, the expression of my most sincere humanitarian sentiments.

Jacqueline Roussie

translated by William Peterson

Copies sent to: Mrs. Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Kathryn Ruemmler, Janet Napolitano, to Mr. Joe Biden, John F. Kerry, Harry Reid, Eric Holder, Neil Eggleston, Rick Scott and to Charles Rivkin, ambassador for the United States in France.