Inside Castro's Prisons

By CBS News Producer Portia Siegelbaum

It was the first time foreigners were allowed into penal facilities here since 1999, when a French human-rights delegation led by Danielle Mitterand, the widow of former French President Francois Mitterrand. The media was last allowed in nearly two decades ago, and the International Red Cross not since 1988.

Reacting to charges of sub-human conditions and inadequate health care for inmates, particularly for foes of the Castro regime, the Cuban government has gone on the offensive.

The pretext - a two-day event on health care in penal institutions —incorporated heavily monitored visits limited to the medical facilities at two Havana penitentiaries.

They included Combinado del Este Men's Prison, the island's largest penal facility, located 30 minutes east of the capital. It's a sprawling concrete complex painted a glaring white, surrounded by fields devoid of trees where hundreds of men played baseball and ran around a track surrounded every couple of feet by guards.

For five hours on Wednesday, uniformed Interior Ministry officers rapidly ushered a bus load of media through the freshly-painted rooms and halls reeking of disinfectant. Intensive care units were outfitted with air conditioners and freshly starched sheets topped with yellow towels twisted into the shape of a swan dressed beds.

Combinado hospital director Dr. Aurelio Gonzalez said the facility built in 1977 has 200 beds, but the press saw only a handful of patients, most of whom appeared primed for the visit. Gonzalez denied being hampered by the shortages plaguing Cuba's national health care system.

"We have everything we need," he insisted, showing off a well-stocked pharmacy and heart monitors.

None of the prisoners interviewed complained about conditions or food. Most shrugged and said things were "adequate."

Some, like 31-year old Enrique Prieto, said, "I don't think the United Nations is acting correctly," in reference to the UN Human Rights Commission. The 53-nation body will be voting shortly on a resolution reproaching Cuba for jailing 75 dissidents last year.

The 75 were convicted of "working for a foreign power [the U.S.], not for thinking independently", Cuba's foreign minister, Felipe Perez Roque, said last week. He added, it was the "provocative actions" of the U.S. ambassador, James Cason, that landed them in prison. Nevertheless, he insisted the dissidents were being treated with "respect".

Prieto, who is serving a 30-year sentence for armed robbery, is one of 16 inmates enrolled in a new two-year training course for nurses. Dr. Nestor Azcano, the hospital's Deputy Director for Education, proudly showed off their small neat classroom, its students crisply uniformed.

"The inmates in this program must have a 12th grade education and of course, rapists and murderers are excluded," he said. The men will graduate with a nursing certificate enabling them, once they are paroled or complete their sentences, to get jobs in hospitals on the outside or to study for a bachelor's degree in nursing. In a small room adjacent to the classroom, these inmates were being taught the basics of Windows on desktops.

The second jail visited, the Western Women's Prison, held the showcase maternity block where iron bar cell doors are never shut and reporters, photographs and cameramen were given the freest rein of the tour.

These clean, bright rooms, with walls festooned with cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse, are meagerly furnished, but family members send baby clothes and one six-week-old baby girl had 10 pairs of pastel colored shoes lined up waiting for use.

The space is shared by pregnant inmates and those who have already given birth. The women are allowed to keep their babies with them until one year of age, when they are taken either by relatives or sent to childcare facilities.

A top U.S. diplomat in Havana described the prison visits as "a limited tour, something for Hollywood." The Cuban government, he said, is "trying to rewrite history and put the fact that the 75 are jailed behind them and say, 'Look how well we're treating inmates.'"

That's not enough, he concluded. "What they need to do is let in international observers."

But when CBS News asked Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque if Cuba would consider doing that he answered with a flat, "No, not while the anti-Cuba maneuvering continues in Geneva."

"We won't play that game," he declared, after blasting the U.S. for pressuring countries to support its effort to have Cuba condemned for human rights violations.