Dissident Handed 2.5-Year Prison Sentence

HAVANA TIMES — The Municipal Court in Guantanamo Province sentenced political opposition figure Rafael Matos Montes de Oca to two years and six months in prison on charges of “predisposition for social dangerousness,” according to the independent Hablemos Press agency.

Correspondent Enyor Diaz Allen reported that “the trial was held with a large police presence, which included the sealing off of the streets that had access to the court to prevent anyone from reaching it.”

Meanwhile, Tavio Rogelio Ramirez, a member of the dissident “Movimiento de Resistencia y Democracia,” said “Rafael’s family couldn’t appoint a lawyer for his defense because it was only today that they appeared at the court to ask what were the charges against him.”

According to the news note, the evidence referred to Matos Montes de Oca as “not working, having bad relations with his neighbors, drinking alcoholic beverages, wandering the streets at night and involving himself with counterrevolutionary elements.”

The 53-year-old member of both the Movimiento de Resistencia y Democracia and the Union Patriótica de Cuba, is the second dissident to be sentenced in less than ten days in Guantanamo, and the third on the island so far this month.