Washington, Feb 12.- U.S. attorney Martin Garbus said he has deep respect for Gerardo Hernandez, one of the five Cubans who were wrongfully convicted in the United States for fighting terrorism.

“The idea that anyone could live through this and maintain a sense of dignity is remarkable,” Hernandez attorney, Martin Garbus, said in a telephone interview with the Californian newspaper Victorville Daily Press, which for the first time has published an article related to the case.

Garbus, who has visited Hernandez at the Victorville prison half a dozen times, said: “I knew Nelson Mandela. There is the same kind of serenity with Gerardo ” this extraordinary quietness and awareness”.

“You can look at his conviction and if his trial had been held any place other than Miami at that time you would have seen a different result,” Garbus said of Hernandez.

Gerardo Hernandez was arrested in 1998 along with four other men: Antonio Guerrero, Ramon Labanino, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, when they were surveiling Florida-based extreme right-wing groups carrying out criminal actions against Cuba.

The article was published on February 9th, and describes the case of the five Cuban anti-terrorists who were found guilty by a jury and arbitrarily sentenced to harsh prison terms.

Hernandez was convicted in 2001 and was transferred after his trial to Lompoc U.S. Penitentiary. In 2004, he was transferred to Victorville.

Rene Gonzalez is the only member of the Cuban Five who has been freed. He was released from prison in Florida in 2011 after serving his entire sentence. Fernando Gonzalez is expected to be released from a federal prison in Arizona on Feb. 27, also after serving his entire sentence.

Garbus is a New York-based civil rights attorney who took over representation of the Cuban Five after the death of attorney Leonard Weinglass in 2011, the Daily Press added. (Prensa Latina)