On October 6, 1976, a Cuban commercial Airliner was blown up in midair, killing all 73 persons on board.

One of the masterminds of that terrorist attack, Orlando Bosch, walks freely the streets of Miami. Being held by immigration authorities in 1990, he received a parole from then-President, George H. Bush who overruled the recommendation of his own Department of Justice to deport Bosch given his long, proven history of terrorism.*

The other mastermind of the terrorist attack on October 6, Luis Posada Carriles, escaped from a prison in Venezuela where he was serving time for that crime, surfaced in Central America working for the U.S. administration of Ronald Reagan in the Iran-Contra affair, and sits now in a detention center in El Paso, Texas after illegally entering the country. He requested to become an American citizen for his past services to the U.S. government.

Thirty years have passed since the terrorists blew up that Cuban airplane killing 73 innocent people whose families still wait for justice to be done. For those families there has been no closure.

On September 12, 1998 a group of people were arrested in South Florida and charged with being "spies" for the Cuban government.

There is a logic that connects the two dates: October 6, 1976 and September 12, 1998. It is precisely the presence and continued plotting on U.S. soil against Cuba of people like Orlando Bosch and others that made necessary the work in the United States of those whom the FBI arrested in 1998. The task of those individuals was to monitor the activities of Bosch and other terrorists in Miami, to save the lives of Cubans and Americans as well.

The five Cubans were submitted to a trial in Miami, the same city where Cuban American extremists not only defend and praise Bosch and Posada Carriles, but also deny the community its right to free expression on matters related to Cuba by resorting to a mobster-like mentality and attitude.

The five Cubans arrested in September 1998 argued that it was impossible for them to receive a fair trial in the city of Miami. Three judges from the Federal Court of Appeals for the 11^th Circuit unanimously agreed, saying that "Here, a new trial was mandated by the perfect storm created when the surge of pervasive community sentiment, and the extensive publicity both before and during the trial, merged with the improper prosecutorial reference."

This opinion came just almost three months after the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, established by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, issued a statement about the case of the five Cubans in U.S. prisons declaring that "The deprivation of liberty of Mr. Antonio Guerrero Rodriguez, Mr. Fernando Gonzalez Llort, Mr. Hernandez Nordelo, Mr. Ramo Labanino Salazar, and Mr. Rene Gonzalez Sehwerert is arbitrary being in contradiction of Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights…"

When this opinion was issued, in May of 2005, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention asked the U.S. authorities to adopt the necessary steps to remedy the situation. However, the five Cubans still remain in U.S. prisons, while those responsible for terrorist attack, including those who killed 73 innocent passengers and crew members on a commercial airline, remain free.

It is important that people of conscience in this country be aware of these realities and of what the dates October 6, 1976 and September 12, 1998 represent.