Life sentences sought for 12 arrested in crackdown

The Associated PressHAVANA -- The first wave of dissidents rounded up in a nationwide crackdown went on trial Thursday as Fidel Castro's government moved to wipe out growing opposition. Prosecutors sought life sentences for 12 of the 80 defendants.

International media and foreign diplomats were excluded from the trials, the final phase of Cuba's harshest campaign against internal dissent in years.

"This is a judicial Tiananmen," said opposition member Manuel Cuesta Morua, referring to the 1989 Chinese military assault on pro-democracy student protesters in Tiananmen Square.

The recommended sentences of 15 years to life were aimed at "putting the brakes on the opposition and warning the United States about Cuban sovereignty," Cuesta Morua said outside one hearing Thursday.

About a dozen trial began in Havana and an undisclosed number started elsewhere in Cuba, ranging from the westernmost province of Pinar del Rio to Santiago in the far east. The government refused to say how many cases were under way but indicated all 80 trials would to be concluded within days.

Sentences here usually are announced in writing within two weeks after the proceedings.

'Not a trial'

"This is not a trial," Maria de los Angeles Menendez, who also showed up to support the defendants. "They are going to put on a show. The sentences are already decided."

The dissidents, rounded up beginning March 18, are accused of working with U.S. diplomats on the Caribbean island to subvert Castro's government and of being mercenaries in the pay of Washington.

Although Cuban authorities publicly announced the arrests and labeled many of the defendants traitors, they have not commented on the trials or disclosed specific charges. But court documents provided by relatives showed that many dissidents are being tried for state security crimes under laws that prohibit Cubans from working with foreign powers to undermine the socialist system.

The crackdown ended several years of relative government tolerance for the opposition. It began when Cuban officials criticized the head of the American mission in Havana, James Cason, for his active support of the island's opposition.

Rising Cuba-U.S. tensions have coincided with a string of hijackings by Cubans trying to leave the communist-run island.

On Wednesday, gunmen forced a Cuban ferry to head toward Florida; the boat returned to Cuba Thursday morning and the hijackers continued to hold the ferry and its passengers hostages. Two airliners were recently hijacked to Key West, Fla.: one on March 19 and a second on Tuesday.

As the trials opened, nine U.S. senators favoring an end to U.S. travel and trade restrictions on Cuba released a letter calling the arrests "deplorable."

"We hope that your government will immediately release these dissidents," members of the Senate Cuba Working Group wrote in a letter to Dagoberto Rodriguez, chief of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington. "Unless corrected, the recent actions of the Cuban government will only undermine efforts to expand contacts between the two countries."

The State Department also condemned the proceedings, saying they amounted to a "kangaroo court."

"While the rest of the hemisphere has moved toward greater freedom, the anachronistic Cuban government appears to be retreating into Stalinism," department spokesman Philip Reeker said in Washington.

Jose Miguel Vivanco, executive director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, said the crackdown appeared to be timed to coincide with the war in Iraq.

"It is truly shameful that the Cuban government is opportunistically exploiting the world's inattention to try to crush domestic dissent," Vivanco said in a statement from New York.

The wives of several dissidents, meanwhile, complained Wednesday that their husbands had been unable to consult with attorneys and had not even seen the prosecution's written case against them.

"I feel so defenseless!" said Elsa Pollan, whose husband, Hector Fernando Maseda was going on trial Thursday. "Where can I find someone to defend my husband?"

Prosecutors are seeking life sentences for at least 12, including opposition political leaders Osvaldo Alfonso Valdes and Hector Palacios, who were being tried together with Maseda and three others, said activist Elizardo Sanchez.

An updated three-page list compiled by Sanchez's Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation released early Thursday showed life sentence recommendations for 12 of 80 defendants. One of them is economist Marta Beatriz Roque, who was among the dozen being tried Thursday at Havana's courthouse.

On Friday, independent journalists Ricardo Gonzalez and Raul Rivero were scheduled to go on trial in Havana. Prosecutors reportedly are seeking a life sentence for Gonzalez and 20 years for Rivero.