CUBA
2 Cuban dissidents released from jail
The number of political prisoners in Cuba dropped to 280 after two
dissidents were freed from jail.
BY FRANCES ROBLES
frobles@MiamiHerald.com
The warden at Las Canaletas jail in Matanzas, Cuba, approached political
prisoner Julio César López as he napped, and uttered two surprising
words: ``You're free.''
''I had prepared for this moment in my mind many times: If they tried
some kind of trick or threat, I was going to turn right back around to
my cell,'' López said by telephone from Havana on Monday. ``But actually
they were very diplomatic and told me I was being released.''
López was one of 30 political activists arrested July 22, 2005, just
before a planned protest in front of the French embassy in Havana. The
rally never took place, and instead López spent 1 ½ years in jail
without charges or a trial.
He and another of the protesters, Raúl Martínez, were released Saturday
without explanation, dropping the number of political prisoners in Cuba
to 280, said Elizardo Sánchez, of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights.
That number stood at 333 one year ago, but Sánchez is hesitant to call
it a trend.
''This is a statistical phenomenon, not a reflection of a trend,'' he
said. ``We continue to see people being released from jail . . . one
drop at a time, but remember that Cuba still has one of the highest
number of political prisoners in the world.
``It's a visible decrease, but at the same time, we also see long prison
sentences being replaced with other forms of harassment, such as short
detentions of a few days, interrogations and threats.''
Other men arrested in the sweep, such as René Gómez and Miguel López
Santos, remain jailed.
''I think [interim president] Raúl Castro understands that the Cuban
people are Fidelistas -- they are not Raulistas,'' López said.
``Raúl has to win the trust of the people as Fidel did in 1959. To me,
he is looking for ways to reach out to the people by doing things like
releasing political prisoners.'''
In December, the government released Héctor Palacios, one of the 75
dissidents jailed in a 2003 nationwide crackdown.
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