Activists: 74 Cuban Dissidents Convicted
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By ANITA SNOW, Associated Press Writer
HAVANA - Cuban courts have convicted at least 74 government opponents in lightning-fast trials aimed at quashing dissent on the communist island, human rights activists said Wednesday.
The known sentences for 57 of those tried reportedly ranged from 6 to 28 years. The remaining sentences were expected by week's end. None of the trials has lasted more than one day, activists said, and there were no reports of acquittals.
The government published a brief statement on Wednesday's front page of the Communist Party daily newspaper Granma saying the defendants were tried "for their known participation in mercenary activities and other acts against the independence or the territorial integrity of the Cuban state."
The statement, the government's first public comment on the trials, confirmed that the trials began Thursday and sentences varied between 6 and 28 years. It did say how many people were tried.
The crackdown, which ended several years of relative tolerance during President Fidel Castro (news - web sites)'s rule, began when Cuban officials accused the head of the American mission in Havana, James Cason, of actively supporting the island's opposition.
The government said independent journalists — along with pro-democracy activists, opposition party leaders and other dissidents — collaborated with U.S. diplomats to undermine the socialist state.
Without precise information from the government, human rights activists lowered the number of defendants Wednesday from 75 to 74.
Four of those arrested in the crackdown were prosecuted on lesser crimes and received sentences measured in months rather than years, veteran activist Elizardo Sanchez said Tuesday. He was among the few leading government opponents not arrested last month.
International condemnation of the trials continued, with Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa and the governments of Mexico, Canada and Sweden voicing protest Tuesday.
The crackdown is "the natural expression of a dictatorship that has been oppressing human rights for years," Vargas Llosa said.
Some of the longest sentences were reserved for independent journalists, including 27 years for reporter and photographer Omar Rodriguez Saludes and 20 years each for poet and writer Raul Rivero, magazine editor Ricardo Gonzalez and economics writer Oscar Espinosa Chepe.
A lawsuit on behalf of Rodriguez Saludes was filed in U.S. District Court in Miami on Monday, accusing Castro and other Cuban leaders of torture and unfairly convicting him in a closed-door trial.
The lawsuit is based partly on the Alien Tort Claims Act, which lets foreign residents sue in U.S. courts those who break "the law of nations or a treaty of the United States."
There was no immediate reaction to the lawsuit from Cuban officials in Havana. The Cuban Interests Section in Washington did not return a call Tuesday seeking comment.
The trials also were condemned by international rights and press groups, who said they violated universal norms.
"They were carried out in flagrant contradiction of international treaties that protect the right to free expression and legal process," the PEN International writers group said in a letter sent Tuesday to Castro.
Cason has denied accusations that the U.S. mission had local dissidents on its payroll, saying the mission operates no differently than American embassies in other countries. |
