Cuba to free 4 opposition prisoners
By PAUL HAVEN
Associated Press
HAVANA -- Cuba's government has agreed to free four men convicted of
trying to flee the island by hijacking boats, and will send them into
exile in Spain, a Roman Catholic Church official said Wednesday. None
are among a group of 11 peaceful dissidents jailed since a 2003
crackdown on dissent.
Church spokesman Orlando Marquez said Wednesday that Alexis Borges,
Victor Jesus Hechavarria, Osmel Arevalos Nunez and Rodrigo Gelacio
Santos are all to be let go in coming days.
Borges is serving a 15-year-sentence for the bloody 1999 hijacking of a
tourist boat in an effort to flee the country. He was intercepted by the
Cuban Coast Guard and arrested.
Borges is on a list of about 100 political prisoners maintained by
Elizardo Sanchez, a well-known Cuban human rights leader. The list
contains both violent and nonviolent prisoners jailed for crimes against
state security.
Sanchez told The Associated Press that the other three men whose release
was announced Wednesday hijacked a boat together in 2005 and took it
into American waters. They were stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard and
eventually returned to Cuba, where they were arrested.
Under a deal announced in July by Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega, Cuba was
to free 52 peaceful activists and social commentators detained in the
2003 roundup.
Authorities quickly released 41 of the men, sending all but one of them
into exile along with their families. But the process has ground to a
halt in recent months, as those who remain behind bars have refused to
leave Cuban soil.
"It's interesting that they are using the wide-open door provided by
Spain to rid themselves of prisoners implicated in violence - people who
wouldn't be accepted in any other country - while at the same time
keeping the 11 peaceful prisoners locked up," Sanchez said.
Alejandrina Garcia, the wife of one of those 11 prisoners, began a
hunger strike on Friday to demand her husband's release.
Garcia's husband, Diosdado Gonzalez, and another dissident prisoner,
Pedro Arguelles, joined the hunger strike on Tuesday. Gonzalez is being
held at a maximum security prison in Matanzas, while Arguelles is in
jail in the central province of Ciego de Avila.
Alexander Aguilar, a spokesman for Garcia, said she has already lost
five pounds since she stopped eating. He said she was only drinking water.
The Cuban government had no immediate comment on the hunger strikes, and
it was impossible to independently verify the authenticity of the
protests. Cuban authorities consider all of the dissidents to be
mercenaries paid by Washington to destabilize the government.
Garcia is one of the founding members of the Ladies in White, an
opposition group comprised of the wives and mothers of jailed
dissidents. Another of the group's leaders, Laura Pollan, visited her
Wednesday to see how she was holding up.
"She is in good spirits," Pollan said. "But we are very worried about her."
Associated Press reporter Andrea Rodriguez contributed to this report.
http://www.miamiherald.com/2011/02/02/2047111/cuba-to-free-4-opposition-prisoners.html
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