Carromero’s Courage

Carromero's Courage / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo
Posted on August 19, 2013
Translated by Alex Higson.
From Sampsonia Way Magazine.

You must have nearly suicidal courage to accuse Cuban State Security, an
offshoot of the Soviet KGB which has thousands of officials and millions
of collaborators on and off the island, of a double murder.

The accusation comes from Madrid, from Ángel Carromero, of the youth
wing of the People's Party, who was extradited from Havana and is still
serving a four-year sentence, having been accused of the deaths of
Oswaldo Payá and Harold Cepero, the leaders of the opposition Christian
Liberation Movement (MCL), who were his passengers on July 22nd, 2012,
along with the Swedish Christian Democrat Aron Modig (who like Carromero
was not injured at all).

Modig was deported to Sweden a few days after the incident, and he
remembers only that he was asleep at the time, although he has asserted
his confidence in the Spaniard's version of events. Carromero related
his story to The Washington Post and El Mundo, as well as on the radio
and television. He also confessed all in person to Payá's daughter, the
human rights activist and new leader of the MCL, Rosa María Payá.

According to Carromero, the collision was not an accident (as he had
initially claimed on video, coerced and injected with as yet unknown
substances). According to him another car pushed them off the road in
the east of Cuba, and uniformed and plain-clothes men took the two
foreigners by force to a hospital in Bayamo. Hours later, both Cubans
were corpses. The Cuban State has never explained who took them all to
the hospital.

Although he has no evidence other than some text messages sent from the
hospital, his conscience wouldn't leave him in peace, and Carromero
broke a tacit pact with the secret power of Castroism: its State
Security. The easiest thing would have been to incriminate himself of
"involuntary manslaughter" with his silence. But not even that would
have saved him as long as he was a witness: he would still have been a
dead-man-walking.

Now, thanks to his voice and Rosa María Payá's, the world is coming
together to call for an international investigation into the violent
deaths of two peaceful human beings with no criminal records. The truth
will set us free. Thank you, on behalf of Cuba, Ángel Carromero.

Source: "Carromero's Courage / Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo | Translating
Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/carromeros-courage-orlando-luis-pardo-lazo/