Relatives defiant after summary trials end in harsh prison terms

By TRACEY EATON / The Dallas Morning News

HAVANA – Cuban authorities on Monday slapped dissidents, journalists and other defendants with harsh prison terms for alleged subversive acts against the
socialist regime.

Family members waiting outside an Old Havana courtroom were angry, indignant and defiant.

"I'm not afraid," said Marcos de Miranda, a dissident whose father, Juan Roberto de Miranda, is on trial. "He who tells the truth doesn't feel fear."

Still, these are difficult yet historic days for members of Cuba's beleaguered opposition. Authorities last month jailed nearly 80 activists, including human rights
workers, journalists, librarians and pro-democracy advocates.

Cuban President Fidel Castro called them "traitors."

They call themselves patriots.

Summary trials against the defendants started last week, and sentencing began Monday.

Cuban courts gave Hector Palacios, 62, a pro-democracy activist, 25 years. Ricardo Gonzalez Alfonso, who recently started Cuba's first independent magazine in
decades, and economist Marta Beatriz Roque received 20 years each, relatives said. Raúl Rivero, 57, a veteran journalist and poet, got the same.

His wife, Blanca Reyes, called it "arbitrary."

"All he did was write the truth. He wrote what he thought," she said. "He didn't have grenades or subversive materials. He just wrote."

Even so, the jail sentence didn't surprise her.

"Here, there's only one judge," said the homemaker, referring to Mr. Castro.

Economist Oscar Espinosa Chepe and journalist Hector Maseda Gutierrez also received 20-year sentences.

James Cason, chief of the American mission in Havana, criticized the proceedings.

"Activities considered normal in any other country will result in life in prison in Cuba," he said Monday in a speech to Cuban exiles in Miami.

Cuban authorities say Mr. Cason meddles in the country's internal affairs and provides illegal financial and material support to the dissidents.

The diplomat denies he's doing anything illegal and says Cuba is merely going through a transition.

"Several different Cubas are emerging from the ashes of the revolution," he said.

Cuban authorities were mum on the sentences. In recent weeks, they've described the dissidents as operatives paid by the U.S. government.

Dissidents deny that.

The opposition operates "in the open. Nothing's done in secret," said Claudia Márquez Linares, wife of jailed activist Osvaldo Alfonso Valdés, who received an
18-year sentence Monday. Mr. Valdés is the leader of the illegal Liberal Democratic Party of Cuba. He told an interviewer in 2001 that the opposition was making
strides.

"If we were insignificant people or cowards, the government would have swept us aside already," he said.

Many dissidents' relatives say the trials are pure theater. One dissident didn't even meet his defense lawyer until five minutes before his trial began.

E-mail teaton@dallasnews.com