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Castro moves their cheese - Journalists, economists given 27 years in one day, Castro trials***Opposition political party leader Hector Palacios, among those originally recommended for a life sentence, received 25 years, said his wife, Gisela Delgado. "This is an injustice," Delgado said after leaving the courthouse. "We are as Cuban as members of the Communist Party." The Communist government accuses the dissidents of being on Washington's payroll and collaborating with U.S. diplomats to harm Cuba and its economy. In many trials, undercover government agents who infiltrated opposition ranks revealed their true identities to testify against dissidents.

International condemnation of the sentences was swift. The U.S. State Department said the proceedings amounted to a "kangaroo court." "The Castro government is persecuting journalists for acting like journalists. They're persecuting economists for acting like economists, and peaceful activists for seeking a solution to Cuba's growing political and economic crisis," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said. Jose Miguel Vivanco, of Human Rights Watch, criticized the trials as a violation of human rights norms and called on the United Nations Human Rights Commission now meeting in Geneva to condemn Cuba for the sentences, which he characterized as "draconian."***

Castro Regime Says Jailed Dissidents Were Mercenaries of the U.S. Empire *** The toughest sentences were for independent journalists -- 28 were arrested -- and organizers of the Varela Project, a petition for democratic reforms that gathered more than 11,000 signatures last year. The initiative's leader, Oswaldo Paya, who won the European Union's top human rights award, the Sakharov Prize, in December, was not arrested, but his organization, the first nationwide opposition network, was dismembered in the roundup.

Luis Enrique Ferrer, a local coordinator in the city of LasTunas for the Varela Project, was sentenced to 28 years in prison, the stiffest sentence, the Cuban Human Rights Commission said.

Cuba's best-known dissident poet, writer and journalist, Raul Rivero, 57, and economist Martha Beatriz Roque -- the only woman put on trial -- got 20 year sentences.

International rights groups said the draconian sentences given after one-day trials by improvised courts, where undercover agents that infiltrated the dissident groups were produced as witnesses, was a throwback to Stalinism. Amnesty International called the jailings appalling and "a giant step backwards for human rights" in Cuba.

The Castro government was undeterred by an outpouring of criticism from foreign governments and rights groups and insisted that the dissidents were a tool of its longtime ideological foe, the United States. The wives of jailed dissidents said they had three days to appeal, but were not hopeful the sentences could be changed. "These terms were dictated by President Castro. In Cuba there is only one voice." said Rivero's wife, Blanca Reyes said after hearing his sentence on Monday. "This is like a Roman circus."***