Cuba Sentences Three Dissidents

Five Cuban dissidents arrested 19 months ago and held without trial ever since finally got their day in court -- and two-year prison sentences.

Emilio Leyva Pérez, Manuel Pérez Soria, Lázaro Alonso Román and René Montes de Oca Martija were sentenced to two years in prison. Independent journalist Roberto de Jesús Guerra Pérez, a correspondent of the Miami-based Payo Libre and Nueva Prensa Cubana news agencies, was sentenced to 22 months.

Their sentences were announced Monday.

They were arrested July 13, 2005, after attending a protest to commemorate the 1994 deaths of 41 people who drowned when the Cuban Coast Guard rammed the tugboat in which they were trying to flee the island.

http://www.miamiherald.com/884/story/27473.html

Comments

[cubanpatriot]

I guess Ana Menendez is working on that column where she pleas for clemency for these people, just like she did for the two who were spying on us for a quarter century.

And hell has frozen over. Good to know free speech is alive and well at the Herald.

[Nik]

Inmates at Gitmo have been held without trial or charge for years. When will they have their day in court? Am sure they would have been thrilled with only being held 19 months.