IF the evidence relating to the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters concealed by the U.S. government were to be released, it would provide irrefutable and convincing arguments to prove their innocence, free them immediately and allow them to return to their homeland.

Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcón de Quesada gave this information to delegates at the 3rd International Conference for World Equilibrium during the launch of the Cuban edition of the Los últimos soldados de la Guerra fría, (The Last Soldiers of the Cold War), by the Brazilian writer Fernando Morais, an event also attended by his compatriot, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a special guest at the conference commemorating the 160th anniversary of the birth of José Martí.

Alarcón also noted that a panel of a U.S. Court of Appeals in California recently ordered the review of a previous decision allowing the U.S. government to withhold satellite images taken over the Strait of Florida on February 24, 1996.

Federal authorities have previously refused this petition from the Five’s defense team because, according to Alarcón, the material proves beyond doubt that the light aircraft brought down that day by Cuban security forces were in Cuban airspace, thus refuting the unfounded charge against Gerardo Hernández for conspiracy to commit murder.

Washington has also refused to release receipts for payments made to journalists who contributed to what the Atlanta Appeal Court judges described as "a perfect storm of prejudice and hostility."

Alarcón highlighted the paradox that while the media had mostly silenced the injustice committed against the Five, in southern Florida, both before and during the trial, federal employees pretending to be journalists – many of them linked to Cuban terrorist groups – were manipulating public opinion and pressuring the jury.

Alarcón described Morais' book as an enormous contribution to the cause of freedom for the Five, and commented that it is a work that Martí would have read with loving interest, having encountered in its pages five young men who lived, like himself, in the "belly of the beast" and yet have retained intact their dignity and love for the distant homeland.

Morais expressed his conviction that, sooner rather than later, he will meet with Gerardo, Ramón, Antonio, Fernando and René, in Havana to celebrate the triumph of truth and justice.