Cuban dissident's widow rejects official account of death

By: Agence France-Presse
July 29, 2012 2:21 AM

InterAksyon.com
The online news portal of TV5

HAVANA -- The widow of Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya rejected Saturday a government report that blamed the car crash that killed her husband and a fellow dissident on the vehicle's driver.

Ofelia Acevedo criticized the government for not giving her access to the two survivors of the crash, including the driver, who have been kept in custody since the July 22 incident in southeastern Cuba.

"I reject this report because it is the official report of the government of Cuba and because I have not had access to this information that they say they have," she told AFP.

"I have no reason at all to believe this version of events."

The government insists Paya, 60, was killed when the rental vehicle in which he was riding went out of control and struck a tree.

In a report issued Friday, the Interior Ministry said the driver, Spanish political activist Angel Carromero, lost control of the vehicle when he abruptly hit the brakes on the slippery surface of an unpaved section of road while speeding.

Paya's family, however, has said it had information that the rental car was driven off the road by another vehicle.

Acevedo said she had not yet been able to talk to Carromero, 27, or the other survivor, Swedish political activist Jens Aron Modig, also 27.

"They were the last people who saw my husband alive and they have to know a lot more than I do so far," she said.

Authorities have kept the two witnesses in custody since the crash.

Also killed with Paya, winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov prize in 2002, was a fellow Cuban dissident, 31-year-old Harold Cepero Escalante.

Paya, a fervent Catholic, is best known for confronting the Cuban parliament in 2002 with a petition signed by 11,000 people demanding political change in Cuba.

Known as the "Varela Project," the initiative was instrumental in opening debate in Cuba on the direction of a communist regime dominated for more than half a century by Fidel Castro and his brother Raul.

Paya's death was keenly felt among Cuba's dissident community, and authorities have been quick to respond to any sign of protests.

About 50 people were arrested Tuesday after they emerged from Paya's funeral service in Havana shouting anti-government slogans. Most were later released without charge, activist said.

Swedish Foreign Ministry spokesman Anders Jorle said there was no reason Modig, who is being held in an immigration detention center in Havana, should not be allowed to go home.