Yahoo! June 15, 2001
Cuban Opponent Sentenced to 2 Years
HAVANA, 14 (AP) - A court sentenced a government opponent to two years in
prison following conviction for publishing false statements about the police, a
human rights group said Thursday.
Marcelo Lopez, of the non-governmental Cuban Commission for Human Rights,
said that Jose Orlando Gonzalez Bridoon was sentenced June 2, but the commission
did not receive written confirmation of the sentence until now.
Gonzalez, a member of the small Democratic Workers Federation of Cuba, was
arrested after he wrote an article accusing police of not responding quickly
enough to a woman's claims that she was being beaten by her husband, the human
rights commission said.
After the woman died late last year, Gonzalez blamed police for a death in
an article that was distributed on the Internet through sites carrying Cuban
opposition writings.
Gonzalez, 50, originally was charged with publishing false information and
enemy propaganda. Government prosecutors sought seven years for those two
charges, but the enemy propaganda charge was later dropped.
Castro Denounces Cyberattack Concerns
HAVANA, 14 (AP) - An irritated Fidel Castro on Thursday dismissed concerns
about Cuban cyberterrorism against the United States as "craziness,''
saying his country doesn't have the technology to launch such attacks even if it
wanted to.
U.S. officials who believe that Cuba could and would attack the country's
computer networks are "orphans, and bereft of ideas,'' Castro said in a
speech shown on state television. He called the United States "an empire
that only knows lies.''
"It is craziness ... it would be against our principles,'' Castro said
at the inauguration of a new solar energy system for a school in the western
province of Pinar del Rio.
Castro's comments were a response to testimony by Rear Adm. Thomas Wilson at
a Senate hearing in February.
Wilson, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, at the time said Cuba
has the potential to use "information warfare or computer network attack,''
enabling the country "to disrupt our access or flow of forces to the
region.''
Some other U.S. officials have said privately that they believe Cuba's
computer capability has been overstated, noting that the island still does not
possess a modern telephone system.
Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who was at the hearing that Wilson
addressed, has said he thinks the issue warrants further study.
"They are pulling his leg,'' Castro said of Wyden. He suggested that
the senator come to the island and investigate for himself. | 