Castro imprisons 100 more

national | miscellaneous | news report Tuesday April 22, 2003 11:11 by Joe Sheahan

Cuban dictator imprisons 100 opposition

Earlier this month, while Iraq was dominating the news, Fidel Castro quietly imprisoned nearly 100 of Cuba's dissidents, independent journalists, human rights activists and intellectuals. Oscar Elias Biscet, for instance, a doctor and one of Cuba's best-known activists, was sentenced to 25 years in jail. Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello, a 56-year-old economist who leads an umbrella organization of 300 human rights groups, was sentenced to 20 years; as was independent journalist Oscar Espinosa Chepe, who has written about the Cuban economy for U.S. Web sites. Cuban authorities accuse the defendants of collaborating in a U.S.-led scheme to undermine the country's government. The charges are baseless. But convictions were rammed through in farcical "trials" nevertheless.

Source:
http://www.nationalpost.com/commentary/story.html?id=5C39B06B-C1C3-44BA-8748-5BAF9B23153D