Cuba Sentences 4 Dissidents

Risking international criticism, Havana on Monday sentenced one of Cuba's best-known dissidents to five years in prison and set lesser terms for his three co-defendants.

The conviction and sentence for Vladimiro Roca, a former military pilot and son of late Cuban Communist Party leader Blas Roca, was announced during the midday news.

"It is wrong. It is unjust," said Roca's wife, Magaly de Armas, who learned of the sentence on the government news. "They didn't even call."

"We are going to appeal immediately," she added.

A five-member tribunal tried Roca and three others behind closed doors the first week of March.

The court set sentences of four years each for lawyer Rene Gomez Manzano and engineer Felix Bonne and 3 1/2 years for economist Marta Beatriz Roque, government television said.

The sentences could hold international repercussions for Cuba, which has worked to improve its ties with other nations, particularly in the Caribbean and Latin America. Canada, the Vatican and several European nations pressured Cuba to free the four dissidents.

Communist officials insist there are no political prisoners on this island nation of 11 million people, only those jailed for common crimes. They reject the characterization of the four dissidents as prisoners of conscience.

The four were arrested in July 1997 for criticizing a Communist Party document that they said did not present solutions to Cuba's severe economic problems.

They were also accused of encouraging Cubans not to vote in that year's elections; holding two news conferences with foreign media; exhorting foreign businessmen not to invest in Cuba ; and asking Cuban exiles to encourage their kin on the island to undertake acts of civil disobedience.

In a detailed report after the trial, the government said prosecutor Edelmira Pedriz Yumar "demonstrated in her report the existing ties between the activities undertaken by the defendants and the forms of aggression toward Cuba adopted by United States' policies."

The report accused the four of receiving financial and material support from organizations in the United States and using U.S.-based media, especially those in Miami and the U.S. government's Radio Marti, "to encourage civil disobedience and transgression of current law in Cuba."

Written by Anita Snow
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