Cuba frees ill dissident, spurs hope- rights group
01 Dec 2005 17:44:00 GMT
Source: Reuters
HAVANA, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Cuban authorities freed dissident lawyer Mario
Enrique Mayo on health parole on Thursday after 32 months in jail,
raising hopes that other dissidents in ill health could also soon be
released, a rights group said.
Mayo, 41, a pro-democracy activist who was arrested in a political
crackdown launched by President Fidel Castro in March 2003, was released
early in the morning in his hometown of Camaguey in central Cuba.
"He was in very bad health, though not in hospital," said Elizardo
Sanchez, head of the nongovernmental Cuban Commission for Human Rights.
Mayo was serving a 20-year prison sentence for opposing Castro's
communist government.
He is the 15th prisoner of conscience to be released from the group of
75 dissidents rounded up in 2003 and jailed for up to 28 years after
summary trials found them guilty of conspiring with the United States to
overthrow Cuba's one-party state.
"We hope this is the start of a new round of releases of the dissidents
that are most ill," Sanchez said.
The veteran rights activist said the health of 11 of the 60 dissidents
still behind bars has deteriorated so far that they are being held in
prison hospitals.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N01174048.htm
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