Fifteen years of organizing to free the Cuban Five starkly reveal that the U.S. government has done some down and dirty deeds trying to wipe out the Cuban revolution of 1959.

Since the revolution, anti-communist Cuban exiles have murdered more than 3,400 Cuban citizens and injured over 2,000 in thousands of terror attacks. Based in South Florida, they are funded, trained and protected by the U.S. government. The severest was Cuban Airline Flight 455 downed in 1976, killing all 78 passengers. It was CIA-sponsored and executed by anti-Castro Cuban exiles, the first to blow up a commercial plane.

In the 1990s, after the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a wave of terror attacks. To stop them, five Cuban intelligence agents infiltrated several far rightwing Cuban American groups, apparently with the understanding that the agents would inform the FBI of future assault plots. Given years of proven U.S. hostility, the Cuban government’s willingness to arrange this is hard to explain. And indeed, the FBI’s response was to arrest the Cuban agents in September 1998, not the terrorists!

A fixed trial. The five men, Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and Rene González, were jailed without bail and held in solitary confinement at distant prisons, making a collaborative courtroom defense impossible. They were charged with no illegal acts, just conspiracy to commit espionage.

Hernández was even charged with murder for warning Cuba of an imminent air attack in 1996. When three planes invaded Cuban air space — for the third time in just over a month — the Cuban air force shot two of them down, killing four pilots. Hernández was outrageously sentenced to two life sentences for conspiring to murder the invading pilots.

In 2001, all five were convicted in a highly-charged Miami courtroom that clearly produced a trial on Castro and communism, not on any criminal acts. Their sentences amounted to four life terms and 75 years collectively. They were jailed in separate penitentiaries and subjected to the torturous treatment this country’s prisons regularly inflict on inmates — from Guantánamo Bay, Cuba to Pelican Bay, California.

For three decades a worldwide movement has worked to free the Cuban Five. Through numerous protests and courtroom challenges, the espionage and murder charges were dropped. One court ruled that the Castro-hating atmosphere of Miami at the time was not a fair location for the trial. But so far, all but one of the men who just finished a 15-year sentence, are still behind bars.

The recent September 2013 federal district court decision on the case was a welcome one. It ordered the State Department to open its files on how the government swamped Miami with over a thousand anti-Castro newspaper, radio and television pieces. How? By paying big money to propagandists posing as reporters who actually worked for the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, a U.S. government propaganda agency. This criminal behavior poisoned public opinion and ensured conviction by an un-sequestered jury. It also re-enforced the government’s rabid anti-communist policy of relentless trade blockades for five decades.

Dissent persists. The enduring campaign to free the Cuban Five and tireless challenges over the years by hundreds of U.S. activists, including Radical Women’s 1997 Feminist Brigade to Cuba, have made a difference. Travel restrictions have diminished, the public is better informed about U.S. thuggish foreign policy, and people are far more knowledgeable about Cuba. Who doesn’t know about this island nation’s socialized accomplishments in medicine and education?

This internationally fought case sharply exposes the U.S. “War Against Terrorism” for what it is, a pretext to strangle political dissent. The authorities’ desperate efforts to halt whistleblowers like WikiLeaks, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden grind on. Drones spy from the sky, NSA spies in cyberspace; police tear gas endangers protesters and striking workers on the streets — all designed to keep rebellions from gaining traction.

But despite its best efforts, the USA has failed to silence the voices of radical dissent. The commitment of the Cuban Five and its steadfast defense organizing is a critical part of a quickening motion for justice and a rational world.

See www.freethefive.org for updates and information on how to help.

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