Saturday, June 30, 2012

Rene Gonzalez offers to renounce his U.S. Citizenship to return to Cuba

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Rene
Photo: Bill Hackwell
On Friday June 22, René González Sehwerert presented a new motion before the South Florida District Court asking that they modify his conditions of supervised release and that he be allowed to return to his country of Cuba where his family resides.

González was released on October 7, 2011, after serving his entire sentence in a U.S. federal prison, but he has been obligated to remain three more years under supervised probation on U.S. soil.
In the latest motion presented last week, González included a number of reasons to be allowed to complete the rest of his probation in Cuba. On this occasion, González offered the Court that he would renounce his U.S. citizenship to make it clear that he has no intention of remaining or returning in the future to the United States.

A similar motion to this latest one was presented by González before he was released from prison. Then, the Judge found that the Defendant’s Motion was premature because a term of supervised release does not commence until an individual is “released from imprisonment”, and some amount of time on supervised release needs to pass before the Court is able to properly evaluate the characteristics of the defendant once he or she has been released from prison.

After 8 months of complying with all probation requisites, René González asks to modify the conditions of his probation to be allowed to return to Cuba to be reunited with his wife, his daughters and the rest of his family.

The United States cannot persist in keeping René González, who when asked to resign his citizenship, expressed firmly that he is neither interested in living in the United States, nor in returning to this country where he has no working, social, or family links.

What arguments will the State Department use next to continue the unjust punishment of René?

Read the Motion

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