HAVANA · A Cuban court on Monday sentenced a blind dissident lawyer to four years in prison after he staged a protest at a provincial hospital along with nine other opposition activists, according to a witness who testified at the trial in the central city of Ciego de Avila.

The sentences of the nine other dissidents who were tried alongside Juan Carlos Gonzalez Leiva on charges of disorderly conduct, disrespect for authority, disobedience and resisting arrest were not immediately known.

It was the first dissident trial since a government crackdown last spring in which 75 rights activists and independent journalists were sentenced to up to 28 years in jail.

The 10 dissidents were arrested on March 4, 2002, while visiting a hospital in Ciego de Avila, about 250 miles east of Havana, where an independent journalist, Jesus Alvarez Castillo, was being treated for injuries after a clash with police earlier that day, according to Human Rights Watch.

Gonzalez Leiva and the others arrived at the hospital to protest Alvarez Castillo's treatment. According to an eight-page criminal indictment, they began shouting "counterrevolutionary slogans and phrases which were offensive to the Commander in Chief such as `Down with Fidel!' and `Down with the Dictatorship!'"

The group then sat down in the hospital for about two hours, after which they were forcibly removed by police, according to the indictment.

The indictment described Gonzalez Leiva, 39, as a university graduate with no criminal record. It noted that he, as well as several other defendants, "was not integrated into mass organizations and did not take part in any socially useful activity."

Alvarez Castillo testified at the trial and said Gonzalez Leiva seemed animated and in good spirits.

"I was able to hug him before I left [the courtroom]," Alvarez Castillo, 47, said. "He held his head up high. He did not seem nervous."

Gonzalez Leiva headed an opposition group called the Cuban Foundation of Human Rights and often denounced the government for alleged human rights abuses. In an April 2001 letter sent to the provincial prosecutor's office in Ciego de Avila, Gonzalez Leiva accused four state security agents of kicking and punching him while he attempted to gather signatures for the Varela Project, a dissident-led petition drive for government reforms. In the letter he stated that the agents drove him to a sugarcane field and abandoned him there after stripping him of his walking stick, dark glasses and several books in Braille. At the time, he requested an investigation into the incident "so that at least the current laws are respected."

Dissidents and human rights activists in Cuba's rural towns and villages generally operate in relative obscurity and isolation and are therefore more vulnerable, opposition leader Elizardo Sanchez said.

"Juan Carlos has a charismatic personality," Sanchez said. "He is very brave and was able to structure his human rights group. ... I think the government was surprised by the level of activity they achieved."

In a May 2001 interview, Gonzalez Leiva told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel that he supported proposed U.S. legislation that would have funneled federal money to dissidents.

"We need to leave fear behind," he said. "It doesn't matter to me that the [Cuban] government says that we are salaried by the Yankees. If the U.S. government puts conditions on the money then we don't want it. But if they want to develop a civil society and human rights without conditions then, whether it's $100 million or $20, anything helps."

According to the indictment, Gonzalez Leiva and two brothers, Enrique García Morejón and Antonio Marcelino García Morejón, faced six years in prison.

The indictment recommended the following sentences for the other defendants:

Virgilio Mantilla Arango, seven years in prison; Carlos Brisuela Year, five years in prison; Lazaro Iglesias Estrada, four years and six months; and Delio Laureano Requejo Rodriguez, two years and eight months. Ana Pelaez Garcia and Odalmis Hernandez Marquez are not facing jail time but could be sent to a four-year work release program.

Vanessa Bauza can be reached at vmbauza1@yahoo.com.

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