US Religious Activists Mourn Cuban Victims of Terrorism
Oct. 9, 2007
Reprinted from Cuban News Agency
 Havana, Oct 9 (acn) More than 30 people gathered in prayer in front of the White House to honor and remember the victims of the mid-flight bombing of a Cuban airliner off the coasts of Barbados in 1976, a crime masterminded by self-confessed international terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.
Reverend Whit Hutchison opened the ecumenical service contrasting the case of the Cuban Five with the protection offered by Bush administration to terrorist Luis Posada Carriles.
"We come not only to commemorate the terrible loss and death caused by a terrorist act, but also to bring attention to the incarceration of five political prisoners who are not allowed contact with their families," he said.
Gerardo Hernández, Antonio Guerrero, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, and René González, internationally known as the Cuban Five, were detained in 1998 for trying to prevent terrorist actions organized by right-wing anti-Cuba organizations based in Florida. They were charged with espionage and punished with extremely harsh sentences despite the antiterrorist nature of their mission.
Reverend Graylan Scott Hagler blasted the US government double-standard policy against terrorism and its open protection of Luis Posada Carriles.
As the ecumenical service continued, people gathered by the hundreds around the group of mourners.
For his part, Reverend Hagler condemned the economic, financial and commercial blockade imposed by Washington to the island for over 45 years and called for the opening of bilateral relations between Cuba and the United States.
Reverend Lennox Yearwood walked on crutches up to the speaker's corner, injured after a brutal attack on Capitol Hill where police wrestled him to the ground for no reason at all. Reverend Yearwood led the mourners into prayer, enticed the mourners into a chant and stressed that: "It is time for us as Americans and for me as an American to stand here and support Cuba; it is time for us to come together as one."
The ecumenical service continued with an intervention by Carlo Gentile a leader of the YCL in Washington, D.C. The closing words were pronounced by Reverend Lazaro Garcia while Sonia Umanzor of the DC Metro Free the Cuban Five Committee called the names of the victims of Barbados crime. | 
