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Yahoo!
News. Wed Nov 6, 6:01 Pm Et. By Anita Snow, Associated Press Writer .
HAVANA - Dr. Oscar Elias Biscet, freed last week after almost three years
behind bars for a political protest, complained Wednesday about treatment in
Cuban prisons and called on rights groups to investigate penal conditions.
"I ask international human rights organizations to supervise Cuban
prisons," Biscet declared in the first news conference with Cuba-based
international reporters since his Oct. 31 release. He also acknowledged it was
unlikely the communist government give international groups the access needed
for such monitoring.
Biscet also complained that during his time in prison he had to sleep for
more than a year on a makeshift hammock-type bed and was given small rations of
food.
To make his point, he showed reporters two metal trays with food, one which
he said demonstrated what he received for lunch each day — about the size
of an average airline meal. The second, more than double the amount, was what he
said he should have gotten.
Biscet was arrested in November 1999 for dishonoring patriotic symbols,
public disorder and instigating delinquency for hanging three Cuban flags upside
down in a sign of protest.
He was sentenced in February 2000 to three years in prison and was let out a
few months early on parole.
The international human rights group Amnesty International on Wednesday
welcomed the Biscet's release, but called for the liberation of others it
considers to be prisoners of conscience.
Cuba's communist government maintains it holds no political prisoners, only
common criminals, and generally characterizes dissidents as "counterrevolutionaries."
Amnesty International said in a statement from New York that two such
prisoners, Leonardo Bruzon Avila and Carlos Alberto Dominguez Gonzalez, were "detained
solely for the nonviolent exercise of their rights to freedom of expression and
association."
Both men have been held awaiting trial since their detention on Feb. 23, the
statement said.
The rights organization expressed particular concern for the health of
Bruzon, who reportedly was hospitalized recently following a hunger strike to
protest his detention.
Another international organization following Biscet's case, Christian
Solidarity Worldwide of Britain, on Wednesday also welcomed the Cuban
physician's release.
"According to international standards on human rights, he should never
have been imprisoned in the first place," the group's chief executive
Mervyn Thomas said. | 
