First, some good news.
Journalist Ahmed Rodríguez Albacia, via Payo Libre, is reporting that Cuban political prisoner Raúl Martínez Prieto was released from prision Saturday, 17 months after he was arrested but never formally charged. Martínez, vice president of the Plantados opposition group, was one of several dissidents arrested while participating in an anti-government demonstration outside the French embassy in Havana on July 22, 2005.
Martínez, 53, told Rodríguez that officials warned him he would be returned to jail if resumed his opposition activities.
Martínez doesn't scare that easily.
"I will stick to my position, even if it lands me in jail again," Martínez said.
Political prisoner Lázaro Rosales Rojas has been on hunger strike since Jan. 25 to protest what he says is daily harassment by State Security and to demand that he be transferred to a prison closer to his home, according to a story by journalist Luis Espinosa posted at Payo Libre.
Rosales last October was arrested, convicted of being a "pre-criminal social danger" and sentenced to three years in prison.
Also still on hunger strike, according to journalist Tania Maceda Guerra, is independent journalist Ramón Velázquez Toranso, whose walk across Cuba to demand respect of human rights on the island and the release of political prisoners was cut short by his own arrest, conviction and sentencing to three years in prison for being a "social danger."
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