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I'm
proud says doctor who spied for secret police
A couple recruited to work as double agents
during Fidel Castro's campaign to hunt out dissidents
meet David Rennie in Havana
The
London Telegraph. September
20, 2003.
The wickedness of Pedro Luis Veliz is not written
in his face. Unless forewarned, you would not
give the mousy Cuban doctor a second glance.
A specialist in intensive care, this 39-year-old
father of one spent the last seven years at the
heart of Cuba's dissident movement, without attracting
the least attention.
This spring, Fidel Castro's secret police launched
their largest crackdown in a decade, arresting
75 dissidents in a three-day operation that began
on the day American forces invaded Iraq - ensuring
that the world's attention was elsewhere. When
the dust settled, Dr Veliz was nowhere to be seen.
A fortnight later the fractured opposition learned
why. Dr Veliz, their comrade in arms since 1996,
turned up in a Havana court as a star prosecution
witness: one of a dozen "heroic" agents
planted in the dissident movement by the secret
police.
Dr Veliz gave evidence against six former colleagues:
independent journalists, democracy activists and
a dissident physician.
His testimony earned his former colleagues sentences
ranging from 15 to 25 years - a total of 116 years.
It earned Dr Veliz a propaganda tour around Cuba,
cheered by crowds prodded into place by local
committees for the defence of the revolution -
the party snoops posted in each city block and
rural district of Cuba, with the power to exact
displays of communist fervour from anyone wanting
a telephone line, slates for a leaking roof, a
job reference or some other favour from officialdom.
This week, exactly six months after the arrests,
The Telegraph became the first British newspaper
to meet the double agents behind Mr Castro's crackdown.
Dr Veliz and his wife - who is also a secret
police agent - arrived at a government press centre
with a silent, crop-haired official they described
as a "friend", who disappeared as the
interview began, re-appearing at the end. One
wall of the interview room was dominated by a
two-way mirror.
In Cuba the secret police have blackmail down
to a fine art. In a country where the black market
is often the only source of food, and "subversion"
means criticising socialism, or listening to foreign
radio, every Cuban has broken the law.
One notorious double agent, it is rumoured in
Havana, was confronted with evidence of lesbian
encounters. Yet - after hearing him brag - Dr
Veliz seems to have been motivated by no more
than fear, and the conviction that everyone he
met was no better than himself.
Describing his recruitment in 1996, Dr Veliz
recalled: "It was the simplest thing in the
world.
"A state security officer came to my workplace
and asked me to collaborate with them. He told
me one of my colleagues and neighbours was linked
to counter-revolution, and if he invited me to
join him, say yes."
Dr Veliz swiftly came to the attention of American
support groups, mostly run out of Miami, who offer
cash, equipment and encouragement to opposition
activists, some of it from US government funds
earmarked for promoting Cuban democracy.
He ended up heading a group for dissident doctors,
the Independent Medical College, with 20 members.
Members received £60 a month from Miami,
or some five times their official salary, in exchange
for reports on the crisis in Cuba's much-vaunted
medical system - a central plank of Mr Castro's
revolution.
His comrades reported hospitals in collapse,
empty pharmacy shelves, and the decision to reserve
Cuba's best clinics and specialists for dollar-paying
foreigners.
To Dr Veliz, not one had sincere motives. "They
criticised every act taken by the health ministry,
and they did it 100 per cent for money from Miami.
Who pays, rules," he said.
Some wanted to get American visas to leave Cuba,
added his wife, Dr Ana Rosa Jorna. She was recruited
as a secret agent at the suggestion of Dr Veliz,
after she became suspicious of his dissident activities
- thinking the late nights and mysterious ways
were signs of another woman.
Dr Veliz has no sympathy for the six men he put
in prison. "Their main motivation was to
fight among themselves for money," he said.
"They thought I was a friend, but I wasn't."
"They lived very well, without working,"
chipped in his wife.
He recalled, with a rare flash of emotion, the
excitement of revealing to the court his identity
as "Agent Ernesto".
He said: "There was an exclamation from
the spectators, it was a shock. I felt proud."
Cuba describes the summary trials for the 75 -
held without juries, and barred to foreign press
and diplomats - as the unmasking of "mercenaries"
hired by America's quasi-embassy in Havana, and
its energetic new chief of mission, James Cason.
Dr Veliz and his fellow agents told the court
that the US mission handed out equipment and literature
to independent journalists and librarians. An
internet cafe was made available to activists.
"They gave me medical journals, a torch
and a short-wave radio," said Dr Veliz. "They
gave other people computers and fax machines."
US diplomats asked him about conditions in hospitals
and medical colleges. "Many times they asked
me about the health of Fidel," he complained.
There is a problem with Dr Veliz's grand revelations,
however. The distribution of equipment was public,
even publicised by American diplomats.
Independent journalists and dissidents interviewed
by The Telegraph last year in Havana all freely
acknowledged that they were paid for their contributions
to US-based news websites.
With many of them sacked for their political
beliefs, they frankly welcomed the help feeding
their families.
As if sensing the need to up the ante, Dr Veliz
accused Mr Cason - a hate figure since he publicly
declared Fidel Castro was "afraid of free
speech" - of inciting terrorism.
"I received videos after Cason arrived,
inciting internal subversion, civil disobedience
and attacking the army and police with violence.
The contents of the videos also incited us to
plant bombs," he said.
Pressed, he described a section in the video
on the Nazi occupation of Denmark, explaining
how bombs and violent resistance forced a German
retreat.
"The narration was incitement to plant bombs.
There was much blood, violence and destruction,"
he said.
Within the fortress-like US mission, an American
diplomat expressed anger at the accusation, producing
the videos in question - a three part documentary
entitled A Force More Powerful: a century of non-violent
conflict.
The videos charted the history of Mahatma Gandhi,
of Solidarity in Poland, consumer boycotts in
South Africa and other acts of civil disobedience,
the diplomat said. It was "absurd, or a wilful
suspension of rational analysis", to label
the video as incitement to violence, the diplomat
added.
Two of the dissidents condemned to jail by Dr
Veliz spoke at length to The Telegraph last year,
during a high point in opposition activity - when
an unprecedented petition demanding reform garnered
signatures of 11,000 Cubans willing to resist
police harassment, even death threats.
The two, Hector Maseda Gutierrez and Oswaldo
Alfonso Valdes, were sentenced to 20 years and
18 years respectively.
The pair - articulate and brave men when interviewed
by this newspaper - were political dunces, forever
squabbling about money and power, claimed Dr Veliz.
At Mr Maseda's cramped flat in central Havana,
a remarkable gathering gave a very different account.
The wives of Mr Maseda and Mr Alfonso were joined
by three other women whose husbands were jailed
this spring, including the wife of Raul Rivero,
the poet and writer who was the most prominent
activist caught in the crackdown.
Laura Pollan, Mr Maseda's wife, described returning
from teaching at a local high school to find a
dozen secret police in her home.
She hid her fear. "I wasn't going to cry
in front of them," she recalled.
As he left, Mr Maseda took his wife's hand and
told her: "Laura, you have nothing to be
ashamed of. I am not a murderer or a thief, or
someone immoral. I'm going for my ideas."
The new prisoners have been sentenced to an initial
two years of "maximum severity" imprisonment.
This means solitary confinement in cells which
are just six feet by nine, are infested with cockroaches
and scorpions and without electric light or clean
water.
Many of the imprisoned husbands are not young
and not well. Family visits are allowed once every
three months, but are difficult and expensive.
In a final act of spite, the husbands have been
jailed in Cuba's farthest regions, including Guantanamo,
600 miles from Havana.
Oswaldo Alfonso's six-year-old son thinks his
father is ill and in a military hospital - a story
invented to explain the uniformed guards when
he visited with his mother.
"But he asked me 'Mummy, where are the ambulances?'
" said his mother, Claudia Marquez.
Most of the wives did not know each other before
the trials, but have been bound tightly by their
shared fate, and Christian faith.
Neighbours and colleagues are largely too scared
to offer them more than muttered expressions of
concern.
If Mrs Pollan met Dr Veliz again, she said she
would congratulate him on his hard work as a spy.
"But I would say, as a doctor, what did
he do to save lives? What sort of doctor is to
send men who are sick to prison?"
She refused to condemn the double agents. "They've
made mistakes, and they will answer to the Lord,"
she said, to a polite round of applause from the
others.
Asked what she thought of the western tourists
visiting Havana in their Che Guevara T-shirts,
apparently oblivious to the current crackdown,
Mrs Pollan ran to fetch a T-shirt bearing an image
of her husband.
"They have their heroes. This is my hero,"
she said.
It is arguable that the sentences handed down
this spring are in fact life sentences - with
the life in question being that of Fidel Castro,
whose death is likely to trigger major changes
in a nation he rules as his absolute kingdom.
The women refused to speculate on when their
husbands might be freed, saying they trusted to
God to decide. In the meantime, despite the dangers,
they refuse to be silent.
Mrs Pollan revealed the risks they run. "Agents
have told me, if I'm interviewed by journalists,
I will lose visiting rights to my husband.
"But if I stay silent, who is going to speak
for him? The world has to know the situation in
Cuba."
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