This is René González, first of the Miami Five to be freed in the United States, as he leaves Marianna prison in Florida, Friday, Oct. 7, 2011.  Watch the YouTube video below – it’s an emotional first encounter with his daughters, his father Cándido and his brother Roberto.  

René’s wife, Olga, is still banned form travelling to the USA to visit him by US authorities, continuing what Amnesty International called a “form of torture” which has been imposed arbitrarily on him for more than a decade.

“I am ready to continue fighting until I die,” were his first words after embracing and kissing his daughters, Ivette and Irmita, who filmed the moment that they met him as he left the prison.

“My love, my treasure. How are you? …they say that I’m looking great. Your older daughter is here filming. They are both beautiful,” he told his wife Olga Salanueva by telephone.

He added that on the eve of his release from the prison, he was confined to the “hole” (the punishment cell) by prison officials: “I remained in the hole the rest of the evening, I slept well and they woke me. I jumped up like a spring. Everything was very quick; from the time they opened the hole until I got out: 10 minutes,” René said.

One can also see René singing “El Mayor,” the song by Silvio Rodríguez, while he is with his daughters and brother Roberto in the car that takes him to where he will live in Florida, while he completes the three years of supervised release imposed by judge Joan Lenard.

“I am thinking of Gerardo,” says René, with the dawn of the morning light and the sounds of “El Necio,” in the car, also by Silvio.The Cuban anti-terrorist activist, together with his lawyer Philip Horowitz, appeared before the officials assigned to supervise his case. 

Video: René González Leaving Prison