President Chavez of Venezuela Challenges CNN to Interview the Cuban Five

Cuban 5 support demonstration held on June 6, 2008 on the Detroit Riverfront. (Photo: Abayomi Azikiwe).
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos

Havana. September 17, 2010

Chávez challenges CNN to interview the Five

CARACAS, September 16.—President Hugo Chávez of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, has called on the CNN television network to give a demonstration of impartiality by interviewing the Cuban Five, whom the channel calls "terrorists," leaving aside imperial manipulation.

"I should like to see CNN interview the five Cuban heroes whom they call ‘terrorists’ and who have been imprisoned by the yanki empire," said the head of state during the swearing in of a group of women to defend ballot stations during the parliamentary elections on September 26, according the presidential press.

Chávez, who last night criticized an interview given by Patricia Janiot – one of the top U.S. presenters at the network – to the terrorist Raúl Díaz Peña, a fugitive from Venezuelan justice, stated that Janiot gave him the right to reply via the Twitter social network, PL adds.

"I challenge you to interview one of the Cubans imprisoned in the United States. The question isn’t about me, Madam Patricia: it is about the dignity of a people," he affirmed.

Although the Venezuelan courts sentenced Díaz to 10 years’ imprisonment for planting bombs at the embassies of Spain and Colombia in 2003, Janiot presented him as a student seeking refuge in the United States.

Translated by Granma International