Speaking Monday on the TV Roundtable program, marking exactly seven years since the arrest of René, Gerardo, Antonio, Fernando and Ramón, Alarcón stated that after Appeals Court ruling in Atlanta overturning the convictions of our compatriots, government prosecutors are extending legal terms to "prolong their kidnapping."

They can do what ever they want, but with our five compatriots free, not being kidnapped, he emphasized. "There is no juridical regulation, no principle to justify them being locked up from the point that a higher court revoked their convictions. The kidnapping has to be resolved in the only way possible: by setting free the victims of that crime."

Gerardo’s defense lawyer, Paul McKenna, commented via telephone on the current state of the legal procedure. The U.S. government is to present some objections to the Appeals Court ruling, but that will not change anything; they will hold firm, he said. McKenna explained that by November or December "we will be in front of Judge Joan Lenard once again, and she is the one who will decide whether or not to order a new trial."

In the case that the U.S. government dares to go for a retrial, nothing will be the same, Alarcón noted. It cannot not be the same tainted environment (Miami), the main reason for the trial’s annulment; it would have to be as far as possible from Florida.

He emphasized that it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of audacity, to dare to ask the Atlanta Court judges to reconsider their decision, because nobody believes that they have the slightest chance of winning such a petition.

Alarcón commented that if they dare to do so, it would mean returning to a district court, where our five compatriots would reappear with the certificate of annulment issued by a higher court after examining all of the documents pertaining to the proceedings, including the secret ones.

He reiterated that a new trial would be very different from the first one. The defense now has in its possession documents from the FBI, the State Department and the CIA that were not declassified seven years ago. These show, for example, that the U.S. government knew months beforehand about the October 1976 sabotage planned and committed by Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, including the fact that they had attempted it on two previous occasions.

Those two terrorists would have to appear in any retrial, Alarcón noted; they would have to be present there. "There is no problem with the Fifth Amendment, they would not have to self-incriminate; the documents prove what they have done."

That would be the reality of a retrial if the U.S. government dares to take that on board. Now that it has Posada Carriles in its hands; what better witness could there be, he observed.

The panelists recalled that the objective of the presence of René, Fernando, Ramón, Gerardo and Antonio in the United States was precise to amass information on acts of terrorism organized by counterrevolutionary groups like Alpha 66, the 2506 Brigade, Brothers to the Rescue, Independent and Democratic Cuba, the Commandos L and the Cuban-American National Foundation. For that reason they participated in eight operations, one of which was aimed at discovering the plans to detonate an explosive device in a building in Cuba frequented by Fidel.

Truth and justice are already coming to light along this long road. That has been demonstrated by the decision of the Atlanta Court of Appeals (August 9), the ruling by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions preceding it (May 27) – which declared the detention of our five compatriots arbitrary and in violation of international law – and the growing international solidarity movement that is demanding, as the only option, the immediate release of those anti-terrorist fighters.