Three 9/11 workers among the 10 ailing people, who flew with filmmaker Michael Moore to Cuba during the shooting of his controversial documentary Sicko, have been incensed by the US Governments probe into their trip.
New York, June 23 : Three 9/11 workers among the 10 ailing people, who flew with filmmaker Michael Moore to Cuba during the shooting of his controversial documentary 'Sicko', have been incensed by the US Government's probe into their trip.
Fifty-four-year-old Bill Maher, the New Jersey man who devoted time on weekends to helping clean up Ground Zero and now has severe health troubles, slammed President George Bush's administration for not doing anything either for health care or for 9/11 workers.
"The issue here is not about Cuba. It's about what this country has done for health care and 9/11 responders," the New York Daily News quoted him as saying at a press conference on Friday.
In May, Moore was notified by the Treasury Department that he was the subject of an investigation over the March trip, which was in violation of the trade restrictions with the Communist country.
While addressing a press conference on Friday, the three workers who appear in Moore's documentary said that though they had not received any such letters, they were expecting to get them soon.
Attorney Martin Garbus, who plans to represent the three workers should they be charged, revealed that the maximum penalty for violating the embargo was a fine of 100,000 dollars, and imprisonment that might extend up to 10 years.
First-responder Reggie Cervantes, an EMT who helped set up triage units at Ground Zero and now suffers from damage to her lungs and kidneys, said that she could not afford treatment for her health troubles in the US because of lack of money.
"I didn't have the money to get the medical care. I would have gone to the moon (to get free treatment)," she said.
Former EMT John Graham, who also suffered lung and kidney damage after working at the World Trade Center site, said that they had travelled to Cuba for free health services, and he was unable to understand why the workers were being investigated for seeking help.
"We're just fighting to live," he said.
ANI