Cuba steps up pace of dissidents' trials with three more in court
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
HAVANA, Cuba (AFP): Cuba stepped up the pace
of its prosecution of dissidents as three opponents of President Fidel Castro
headed to court Tuesday in the third such round of proceedings in as many
weeks, dissident sources said. Activists
Orlando Zapata, Raul Arencibia and Virgilio Marante, who were arrested back in
December 2002, were charged with "public disorder, disobedience and resisting
authority." They each face a maximum of three years in jail.
The trial began early Tuesday outside Havana, said Elizardo Sanchez Santa
Cruz, who heads the Cuban Committee for National Reconciliation and Human
Rights. The three were arrested in December
2002 while taking part in a meeting of the Lawton Foundation at a private
home, a rights group led by jailed dissident physician Oscar Elias Biscet.
Biscet is serving a 25-year jail term. The
European Union last Thursday condemned the recent convictions of 13 more
dissidents in Cuba, demanding the communist regime release all political
prisoners "without delay". The dissidents
"were arrested while peacefully exercising their rights to freedom of
expression, opinion, association and assembly, principles the EU strongly
defends", the 25-nation bloc said in a statement.
On April 27 it emerged that 10 dissidents had been convicted after the first
political trials in a year. In April 2003, the summary trials of 75 dissidents
provoked worldwide condemnation of President Fidel Castro's communist regime.
There are some 330 political prisoners in Cuba of whom 88 are recognized by
international human rights groups as prisoners of conscience, according to
Sanchez Santa Cruz's group.
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