HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters): Five dissidents arrested in 2005 in demonstrations against Cuba's Communist government were sentenced on Tuesday to jail terms of up to two years, human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez said.
Rene Montes de Oca and Roberto de Jesus Guerra were picked up by police after a "symbolic" protest on the fringes on Havana's Revolution Square on July 13, 2005, he said.
Three other dissidents arrested the same day in another peaceful demonstration near the port of Havana were also convicted of public disorder.
All got two-year prison terms, except Guerra, who was sentenced to one year and 10 months. They should be freed within months because they receive credit for time served, Sanchez said.
"They should not have spent a day in jail because they committed no crime," said Sanchez, who heads the illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission for Human Rights.
"We think the government is moving to close pending cases," he said.
Since Cuban leader Fidel Castro underwent emergency surgery and handed over power to his brother Raul in late July, Cuba has freed four jailed dissidents, including sociologist Hector Palacios and Rene Gomez Manzano, a lawyer who had been held for 18 months without trial.
Palacios was the 16th member of a group of 75 dissidents jailed in a March 2003 crackdown to be released on medical grounds. The others are serving sentences of up to 28 years.
Fifty selective releases during 2006 reduced the number of Cubans in prison for political reasons to 283, Sanchez said.
Havana says Cuba's small and fractious dissident movement is made up of "mercenaries" on the payroll of its longtime ideological enemy, the US government. | 
