Cuban dissident says he was held in a swamp lockup as punishment

Posted on Thursday, 08.16.12

Cuban dissident says he was held in a swamp lockup as punishment

Angel Moya and five other members of the Democratic Freedom for Cuba
Movement were detained last weekend outside the home of a movement member.
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban dissident Angel Moya said Wednesday that State Security agents
held him in a lockup in a mosquito-riddled swamp, 29 miles from the town
where was arrested, as part of a campaign to "subdue" him and other
anti-government activists.

Moya and five other members of his Democratic Freedom for Cuba Movement
were detained Sunday outside the home of movement member Felix Sierra,
in the town of Pedro Betancourt, after police and State Security agents
searched the Sierra home.

The six dissidents were meeting nearby in Pedro Betancourt when they
learned of the search and walked to the home to "show our moral and
political support," Moya said.

Five dissidents were freed Sunday night, but Moya said he was held until
Tuesday in a notoriously harsh State Security lockup 29 miles away in
Playa Larga, in the Cienaga de Zapata, the mosquito-infested swamp that
was the site of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

"Of course this was done on purpose," the 47-year-old dissident told El
Nuevo Herald, as part of the efforts by State Security agents to
intimidate and "subdue" anti-government activists.

The cells in the lockup have solid steel doors and no running water, and
the temperatures inside are "infernal," Moya said. State security agents
took him out of the lockup early Tuesday, drove him to Pedro Betancourt
and freed him on a town street.

Moya was one the 75 dissidents sentenced to up to 28 years in prison
during a 2003 crackdown. The last 52 still in prison were freed in 2010
and 2011 as part of talks between the Cuban government and Catholic
Church. All but a dozen, including Moya, went directly from prison to
the Havana airport for flights to exile Spain.

Two dissidents have reported that some of the Sierra neighbors who
gathered to watch the police search threw rocks at the security
officials as they carted away the dissidents. Moya said he was told on
Tuesday about the rock-throwing but did not witness it.

Other activists meanwhile reported that a dissident who threw
anti-government leaflets on a busy Havana street on Monday — former
ruler Fidel Castro's 86th birthday — was moved from a police lockup to
the Valle Grande prison and may face formal charges.

Marcelino Abreu Bonora, 48, shouted "down with the Castros' tyranny" and
"Freedom for the Cuban people" as he threw the pamphlets into the air on
Obispo Street in Old Havana, according to two video recordings of the
protest.

The videos show many passersby walking quietly past the protest until
two uniformed members of the National Revolutionary Police haul Abreu away.

Abreu has been briefly detained several times, and declared several
hunger strikes, in recent years. But his transfer from a Havana police
lockup to the Valle Grande prison indicated that authorities this time
may put him on trial, other activists said.

Cuban security officials regularly detain dissidents for short periods
to intimidate them or avert opposition activities. More than 200 such
"express detentions" were reported in the first 14 days of August alone
by the independent news agency Hablemos Press on Tuesday.

Jose Daniel Ferrer Garcia, another of the "Group of 75" political
prisoners who were freed last year and refused to leave the island, told
El Nuevo Herald that police had detained six members of his Cuban
Patriotic Union to avert a group meeting Wednesday.

Ferrer said that gathering, organized as a lecture on "the art of
negotiation," was held Wednesday in his hometown of Palmarito de Cauto
in the eastern province of Santiago de Cuba.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/16/2953238/cuban-dissident-says-he-was-held.html