By Juan O. Tamayo . jtamayo@herald.com . Published Saturday, May 13, 2000, in the Miami Herald
The Cuban government on Friday freed a member of the island's best-known dissident group, a former university professor jailed nearly three years for joining three other critics in a harsh condemnation of the ruling Communist Party.
Felix Bonne, at his home since Wednesday on a temporary pass from prison, was notified by officials at 2 p.m. Friday that he had been granted early release after having served 1,032 days of his four-year sentence.
There was no immediate word on the other members of the so-called Group of Four convicted along with Bonne -- Marta Beatriz Roque, Rene Gomez Manzano and Vladimiro Roca.
The four are Cuba's most celebrated opposition leaders, strongly defended by many foreign governments, the Vatican and human rights groups as dissidents who peacefully oppose President Fidel Castro's Communist government.
``I have committed no crime,'' Bonne told Agence France-Presse news agency Friday in his Havana home. ``I see no reason to change my political objectives.''
``This is good news for the Bonne family . . . and I would not be surprised if the others are released soon, also, human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez said in a telephone interview from Havana.
Sanchez said Bonne's wife, Maria Dominguez, told him that her husband was granted ``conditional freedom, a type of early release granted to first-time offenders who have served at least half of their sentences.
The four, formally known as the Internal Dissidence Working Group, were arrested in July 1997 after issuing a scathing attack on the Communist Party's 35-year-old monopoly on power titled ``The Motherland Belongs To All.''
They were convicted of incitement to sedition in a one-day trial March 21, 1999.
The trial was closed to foreign diplomats and journalists.
Bonne and Gomez Manzano were sentenced to four years in prison, Roque to 3 1/2 years and Roca to five.
Roque, a 53-year-old economist; Gomez Manzano, 56, a lawyer; and Bonne had received several one- and two-day home passes from their Havana prisons this year in apparent preparation for their early release.
Bonne, a 60-year-old engineering professor fired from the University of Havana, had been sent home Wednesday because of an asthma attack triggered by construction near his prison, human rights activists in Miami said.
Roca, a former air force pilot and son of the late Communist leader Blas Roca, is being held under far harsher conditions, kept in solitary confinement in a prison in Arisa, a town 125 miles east of Havana.
Roque's relatives tried to visit her Friday but were told to return Tuesday, Miami human rights activist Ruth Montaner said.
Gomez Manzano's brother saw him in prison Friday but received no hint of an imminent release.
``We hope that this will lead to the release of the scores of prisoners of conscience held in Cuban prisons and the hundreds of others jailed for their politics, Sanchez said.
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald |