AFP - Police on Thursday released the Cuban opponent Guillermo Farinas, 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought by the European Parliament and a score of dissidents in custody after seven hours in Santa Clara in the center of the island , said Mr. Farinas told AFP.
"We are free. They had us arrested for coming to the aid of a family they wanted to remove.The opposition should devote themselves to peaceful protests of citizens such as we have done, "said the opponent by telephone from Santa Clara, 280 km east of Havana.
This cyberjournalist psychologist and 48 years, who had observed a hunger strike for 135 days last year, was renewed by the police at his home around midnight and ensure they were not mistreated.
"The police wanted us to sign a recognition of pre-criminal social dangerousness + +, but we did not.After three such, they can introduce you to court, "Farinas said.
The police justified the arrest by the "scandal" that opponents led by haranguing the authorities, while trying to evict a family who illegally occupied housing, he said.
Farinas had stopped eating to demand the release of political prisoners after the death of prisoner of conscience Orlando Zapata Tamayo, 23 February 2010, after 85 days of hunger strike to protest against his conditions of detention.
He had ended his fast after 135 days when the government of Raul Castro, had begun an unexpected dialogue with the Church and allowed the release of 52 of the 75 dissidents arrested in 2003.
Forty-one of them have since been released. Forty agreed to leave the country and went to Madrid and one remained in Cuba.The eleven remaining refuse to emigrate to Spain and are held in prison.
The Cuban government accuses Farinas behavior "antisocial" and considers it, like other dissidents as "mercenaries" of the United States.
Farinas was represented by an empty chair at the Sakharov prize last December 15 in Strasbourg (north-eastern France), permission to travel having been refused.
Military training, a native of Santa Clara and son of two ardent revolutionary, he had distanced himself from the regime in 1989, opposing the execution of General Arnaldo Ochoa, accused of drug trafficking.
Became an opposition activist has been imprisoned three times before police custody on Wednesday and said he observed 23 hunger strikes since 1990.
