HAVANA, CUBA -- Security forces on Tuesday released some of the scores of activists detained during the sedition trial of four well-known dissidents accused of promoting aggressive U.S. policies toward their communist homeland.

A verdict is pending in Monday's trial, which has focused international attention on Cuba's human-rights policies. The tribunal has until March 17 to issue a decision.

The prosecution recommended a 6-year sentence for lead defendant Vladimiro Roca and 5-year terms for the three others. Relatives say the four rejected government offers to go into exile rather than face trial.

Scores of their supporters were detained before Monday's hearings, evidently to prevent any protests outside the courthouse.

Besides Roca, a former military pilot and son of late Cuban Communist Party leader Blas Roca, the defendants are lawyer Rene Gomez Manzano, engineer Felix Bonne and economist Marta Beatriz Roque. They were arrested in July 1997.

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