Cuba and Spain agree to move prisoner

HAVANA TIMES (dpa) – Spanish politician Angel Carromero, who was sentenced to four years in prison in Cuba over an accident which killed Cuban dissident leader Oswaldo Paya, will be moved to a Spanish prison, the government in Madrid announced Friday.

The government authorized the transfer after reaching an agreement with Cuba, Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said.

Carromero, a member of Spain’s ruling People’s Party, was tried in October in the Cuban town of Bayamo on charges of reckless driving.

Carromero was driving a car which crashed into a tree on July 22 near Bayamo.

Paya and fellow dissident Harold Cepero died, while Carromero and Swedish politician Jens Aron Modig suffered minor injuries.

An investigation showed that Carromero was speeding at the time of the crash on a stretch of road that was being repaired.

Carromero and Modig had travelled to Cuba as tourists, but planned to meet with the opposition to Cuban President Raul Castro.

As head of the dissident Christian Liberation Movement, Paya waged a long-running campaign of legal initiatives to reform communist Cuba. He was nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize and in 2002 was awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought.