Nothing more starkly exposes US double talk on questions of human rights, national sovereignty and the so-called "war on terror" than the case of the Miami Five.

In the 1990s, Gerardo Hernandez, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, Antonio Guerrero and René González were sent by the Cuban government to unearth the terrorist plots being hatched by right-wing Cuban emigres in Miami, Florida.

The Cuban authorities sought to defend the tourist and agricultural industries that had been the target of bomb outrages killing hundreds of Cuban and foreign citizens.

These sectors continue to be crucial to Cuba's ability to survive the illegal economic embargo imposed by the US since 1960.

The Five's mission was necessary because US authorities had refused to smash the terrorist cells operating from US territory against Cuba and led by the likes of Orlando Bosch and CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles.

Both men were involved in the murder of all 78 passengers aboard a Cuban Airways plane between Barbados and Jamaica in 1976.

US tardiness to act against these licensed killers contrasts sharply with its readiness to kidnap, chain, transport and torture more than 1,000 foreign nationals around the world as part of its bogus "war on terror."

The ultimate insult is that many of these victims of US injustice ended up in Guantanamo Bay concentration camp, on a US military base ceded under duress by Cuba's first president in 1903.

That same system of US injustice had already slammed the five Cuban patriots in prison for espionage after their information about terrorist activity was given to the FBI.

In 2000, instead of being thanked by the US government for their courageous work, the Five were sentenced to prison terms from 15 years to life times two.

Since then, the worldwide campaign for justice for the Five has gathered pace. The prisoners have conducted themselves in exemplary fashion, even entering into extensive personal correspondence with supporters here in Britain.

One of the freedom fighters, René González, was eventually freed and allowed home to Cuba last year.

He would have been be a witness at the international commission of inquiry into the Miami Five case opening in London today had the British government not bowed to US pressure and shamefully denied him a visa.

Eminent judges from India, South Africa and France will hear testimony from a host of human rights organisations and from Miami Five families and other victims of US-based terrorism.

Whatever the commission's findings, democratic and progressive opinion around the world has already found the US guilty of hypocrisy, double standards and numerous breaches of international law.

Its long campaign of state-sponsored terrorism against Cuba is widely understood. Its 50-year embargo is a cruel vendetta against a popular communist adminstration that dared to extinguish rule by a puppet dictator, US big business corporations and the US mafia.

Against huge odds, the Cuban people are striving to build a peaceful, civilised socialist society which puts much of the capitalist world to shame when it comes to education, healthcare, culture and social harmony.

Cuba must be free to choose its own path of economic, social and political development. The Guantanamo camp should be closed and the territory returned to Cuban sovereignty, the three jailed Cuban patriots - Fernando González was released last week - should be freed and the illegal US embargo ended.