CUBA: Cuba unexpectedly released five opponents of President Fidel Castro, including a dissident suffering heart problems and four who were held for more than two years without trial, dissidents have said.
Mr Miguel Valdes Tamayo (47), freed on Wednesday morning, was the second of 75 opponents jailed last year in a crackdown on dissents to be released on health grounds.
Authorities on April 14th set free human rights activist Mr Julio Antonio Valdes so he could undergo a kidney transplant.
"This took me by surprise. I did not expect to be freed," Mr Valdes Tamayo, who was serving a 15-year term for sedition, said at his Havana home.
He said the government might be planning to release the rest of the 75 dissidents, whose one-day trials and sentences of up to 28 years prompted international condemnation and a freeze in diplomatic relations with the EU.
Mr Leonardo Bruzon Avila, Mr Emilio Leyva, Mr Lazaro Rodriguez and opposition journalist Carlos Alberto Dominguez were released on Tuesday after 27 months in prison without trial.
The four were arrested on February 22nd, 2002, and charged with inciting public disorder for trying to hold memorial ceremonies honouring four Florida-based Cuban exiles killed when Cuban fighter jets shot down their two small planes in 1996.
"They told me to go home and stay out of trouble," said Mr Leyva (38). "But they have no moral authority, because they jailed me arbitrarily."
International rights groups campaigned for the release of Mr Bruzon (49), a former librarian, after he began a hunger strike to demand a trial. President Bush mentioned him last year in a speech on Cuba.
Mr Bruzon's health deteriorated in prison where he went on hunger strike four times. He said he weighed 85 pounds in April when he was transferred to a hospital.
"I want to continue fighting for the defence of human rights in Cuba," he said on Tuesday.
Cuba labels all dissidents as "counter-revolutionaries" on the payroll of the US. The arrests ordered last year were the toughest crackdown in decades. Another 16 have been jailed in the last two months.
Veteran Cuban rights activist Mr Elizardo Sanchez said the decision to free the five, made at the highest level of the Cuban government, did not indicate any change in policy. - (Reuters)