March 5, 1999
Web posted at: 6:36 p.m. EDT (1836 GMT)
HAVANA (CNN) -- Although the verdicts in the trial of four Cuban dissidents are still pending, the government is leaving little doubt about the outcome.
"In the eyes of our people, they have already been condemned because the proof is there. But we have tribunals. This is a country of law, and we must await the tribunal's decision," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alejandro Gonzalez said Friday.
Prosecutors have accused the four government opponents of inciting sedition. They were arrested in July 1997 for criticizing a Communist Party document that they said did not present solutions to Cuba's severe economic problems.
The charges also included encouraging Cubans not to vote, urging international businessmen not to invest in Cuba and asking Cuban exiles to encourage relatives on the island to undertake acts of civil disobedience.
State prosecutors have asked for a six-year sentence for Vladimiro Roca, a former military pilot and son of late Cuban Communist Party leader Blas Roca, and five years each for lawyer Rene Gomez Manzano, engineer Felix Bonne and economist Marta Beatriz Roque.
Relatives say the defendants expect to be convicted.
"Her mood is perfect, very good... but my aunt is convinced she is going to get five years," said Roque's nephew, Joel Alfonso Roque.
On Thursday, the official Communist Party newspaper Granma lashed out at international criticism of the dissidents' trial, charging the defendants of having ties to the U.S. government and exile groups.
Granma said the government had conclusive proof of the four's "traitorous" and "mercenary" crimes, and accused the U.S. government of "loaning material and political support" to dissidents in Cuba for "destabilizing activities."
The editorial also criticized unnamed international journalists for "distorting the reality of the country in their reports and becoming spokesmen" for people who "are interested in damaging the national economy and subverting the social order of the country."
The trial has drawn criticism not only from the United States, but from the island's biggest trade partners, Spain and Canada, and other parts of Europe and Latin America.
The top U.S. diplomat in Cuba, Michael Kozak, condemned the judicial procedure of the trial's first day and protested when security forces refused to allow him, as well as other diplomats and journalists, into the trial. Cuba filed a protest to the U.S. government over Kozak's behavior.
"The statements and attitude of the head of the U.S. Interests Section are in evident conflict with what should be the conduct of a diplomat," Gonzalez said.
Gonzalez also denied that a new law aimed at independent Cuban journalists had anything to do with the international press but added that on the island "you have to follow the Cuban law just as you do in any country in the world."
As for international reporters who don't comply, Gonzalez said: "We could just simply invite them to leave the country. We don't have to jail them for 20 years."
Havana Bureau Chief Lucia Newman, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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