Cuban dissident Luis Garcia Perez freed after 17 years

Here is the article from Taipei Times (original source here).

AP, HAVANA
Wednesday, Apr 25, 2007, Page 7

Cuban dissident leader Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, who wrote a book about prison conditions on the island while behind bars, was freed after serving his full 17-year sentence, human-rights groups said.

Garcia Perez, widely known as "Antunez," was released on Sunday, the opposition human-rights group Bitacora Cubana said on Monday.

He was arrested for enemy propaganda and attempted sabotage in 1990. Pope John Paul II petitioned for his early release before his historic visit in 1998. Cuba freed 14 others as a goodwill gesture tied to the pope's visit, but left Garcia Perez in prison.

PRISON JOURNAL

While serving out his sentence he wrote Boitel Lives, a book about prison conditions that was published outside Cuba.

The book is named after Pedro Luis Boitel who died in 1972 in a Cuban prison after 53 days on hunger strike.

The Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, a which represents anti-Castro exiles, congratulated Garcia Perez for his "consistency of principles."

While Garcia Perez got out, two other dissidents have been imprisoned this month after secret trials, according to a Havana-based rights group.

NEW TRIALS

A lawyer, Rolando Jimenez Posada, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for painting graffiti and distributing pamphlets with an anti-government message.

He was tried over the weekend without a defense attorney or family members present, and convicted of disrespect for authority and revealing state secrets, said Elizardo Sanchez, a spokesman for the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

Officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday about these cases.

Sanchez said Jimenez Posada was brought to Havana for the trial from Isla de la Juventud, where he has been jailed since his arrest in early 2003. It was unclear if the time already spent in jail would count toward the 12-year sentence.

According to Sanchez, Jimenez Posada's relatives say his request to represent himself in court was denied and that after he protested, he was not allowed to attend his own trial.

The rights commission also criticized the proceedings against journalist Oscar Sanchez Madan, who wrote about dissident groups and the hardships of island life.

He was arrested April 13 and tried in secret that day, the commission said. Found guilty of "social dangerousness," he was sentenced to four years in jail.

Seven Cuban dissidents freed

HAVANA - The Cuban government has released seven dissidents from prison, including a 42-year-old man who had been behind bars for 17 years, dissident sources said on Tuesday.

Six dissidents were released Tuesday after spending two years in prison for “public disorder,” ”posing a danger” and “insolence,” the sources said.

Their release came two days after another prominent dissident, Jorge Luis Garcia Perez, 42, was freed after spending 17 years and 37 days in prison on charges of “verbal enemy propaganda,” ”attempted sabotage” and failing to respect Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

Perez, known as Antunez, was arrested for speaking out against Castro, who leads the Americas’ only one-party communist regime, on March 15, 1990.

Dissidents did not see the prisoners’ release as a goodwill gesture from the government, saying recent summary and secretive trials show that the government repression persists.

“We don’t see anything special in this,” Elizardo Sanchez, who leads the Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, told AFP.

“We are happy for (Perez’s) release, but he is coming into the streets of a country under a government that doesn’t respect any civil, political and economic rights,” Sanchez said.

“He has come out only to be exposed to an atmosphere of intolerance and political persecution,” he said.

While Cuba insists it hold no political prisoners, dissidents say almost 300 are behind bars.

Sanchez also announced the releases of Manuel Perez Soria, 55; Lazaro Alonso Roman, 32; and Emilio Leyva, 42.

Another dissident group, the outlawed National Coordinator for Past and Current Political Prisoners, said three other dissidents were released: Duylian Ramirez, Elio Chavez and Jose Diaz Silva. There ages were not immediately given.

One of the newly freed dissidents reiterated his opposition to Castro’s regime.

“I am an opponent of this government and my life is fully dedicated to this, because I am on the right side,” Perez Soria told AFP. “This country is screaming for economic, political and social changes.”

Original Link: Khaleej Times Online