Carromero says Cuban officer forced him to change crash story

Posted on Wednesday, 08.14.13

Carromero says Cuban officer forced him to change crash story
BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM

Angel Carromero says a Cuban officer slapped him "a couple of times" to
dissuade him from insisting that the death of leading dissident Oswaldo
Payá was caused by State Security agents and was not an accident.

The evidence also led him to conclude that Payá and another dissident,
Harold Cepero, survived a car crash and were murdered later by State
Security, Carromero told El Nuevo Herald Tuesday during his most
detailed recounting yet of the crash.

The Spaniard's comments by phone from Madrid shed new light on a fatal
incident that has led the Payá family, the U.S. and other governments
and many human rights activists around the world to demand an
independent investigation of the deaths.

Carromero said he is now speaking at length about the crash and its
aftermath to help Payá's relatives — he is eager to testify at any
lawsuit they file against Cuba, he noted — and to mark the anniversary
of the deaths on July 22.

Cuba's version is that he was driving a rented Hyundai too fast and hit
a tree near the eastern city of Bayamo. Payá died on the spot and Cepero
later at a hospital. Another passenger, Jens Aron Modig of Sweden, was
not injured. Carromero was convicted of vehicular homicide and was freed
to serve his four-year prison sentence in Spain.

Carromero says that a Cuban man in military uniform "slapped me around a
couple of times" to persuade him that he was wrong when he insisted on
saying that a car with government license plates had rammed his vehicle
from behind and caused the crash.

"That did not happen. Slap. Slap," he recalled the officer saying. "It
wasn't a beating. A couple of slaps because they wanted me to change my
version of events."

Carromero said his car had been tailed by three different government
vehicles, including one marked police cruiser, from the time the
foursome left Havana the morning of July 22 to visit dissidents in
eastern Cuba. The two Europeans were members of conservative political
parties that often support the island's opposition.

Evidencing the intensity of the government's interest on Payá and the
Europeans, "Yohandry Fontana," widely believed to be a front for State
Security operations, tweeted six hours before the crash that Payá was on
his way to the beach resort of Varadero.

Carromero said they never drove to Varadero. But on the previous day, he
added, he had exchanged 4,000 Euros into Cuban currency in Havana. When
the teller asked him why he was changing so much, he replied that he was
going to Varadero.

The police cruiser that initially tailed them gave way to an old red
Lada as they made their way east, he said, and shortly before the crash
was replaced by a newer blue car, also with clearly visible blue license
plates and with two men aboard.

That car kept getting closer and Payá told him to maintain his normal
speed of about 50-60 kph, the Spaniard said. But he grew scared, "It's
terrifying to look at the rear view mirror and see the eyes of the
person that is looking at you.

"I felt the impact and lost control," he said. He fainted and does not
recall hitting a tree, certainly not with the kind of impact that would
have killed two people. He never saw the blue car or its passengers again.

Carromero said he recovered consciousness as a group of men were putting
him into a white mini-van that apparently drove him to the hospital in
Bayamo. It was the same kind of van that police later used to drive him
from prison to his trial, he added. At his trial, Cuban officials said
they did not know who drove him to the hospital.

He fainted again and came to in the hospital, where he got two stitches
for a cut on the right side of the head. The Spaniard said he was
initially told that four people had arrived, then three, then just two —
he and Modig.

Carromero said he never saw Payá or Cepero in the hospital, but that
considering all the evidence in the case, including the fact that Payá's
relatives never received a copy of his autopsy, "it is logical that they
were assassinated."

At the hospital, he told the first Cuban official that questioned him —
a woman in military uniform — that another car had rammed him and run
him off the road. She took down his testimony and had him sign that
declaration, he added.

But then a group of male officers in uniform, including the man who
slapped him, turned up and threatened that if he did not agree to say
that it was a one-car crash he might go to jail and not get out for a
long time, Carromero added.

Eventually he agreed to film a video voicing the Cuban version of the
crash and hoping to get a light sentence. While Gross remains in prison,
Carromero was allowed to return to Spain to serve the remainder of his
sentence. He now wears a GGBPS ankle bracelet.

"At 26 years of age, surrounded by military people, without knowing what
the hell to do … I signed anything," he said.

A Spanish consular official visited him two or three days after the
crash but was turned back for several weeks afterwards, Carromero said.
He did not meet his Cuban lawyer until about 20 days after the crash and
with his Spanish lawyer until one day before his trial. The Cuban lawyer
had a suspicious motorcycle accident before the trial and broke a foot.

Carromero said he is now extremely thankful that the Spanish government,
controlled by his Popular Party, had persuaded Cuba to allow him to
serve the remainder of his sentence at home. He is on home release.

But he ruefully admits that he considered suicide when he was jailed in
Cuba.

"I don't feel very proud of that," he said. "But I was desperate. I
thought they were never going to let me go. In that country, they accuse
you and you're already condemned. Resign yourself, because it's over."

Source: "Carromero says Cuban officer forced him to change crash story -
Cuba - MiamiHerald.com" -
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/08/13/v-fullstory/3560796/carromero-says-cuban-officer.html