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| Sat Apr 26,10:09 AM ET |
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A demonstrator holds up a banner in central Madrid April 26, 2003, during a protest against the April 11 execution of three men who commandeered a Havana commuter ferry in a bid to reach U.S. soil. Cuban President Fidel Castro (news - web sites) defended the firing squad executions as a deterrent to a mass exodus that he said the United States was seeking to provoke in communist-run Cuba. The executions, which followed the arrests of 75 dissidents in the worst political repression in Cuba in decades, prompted an outpouring of criticism worldwide and lost Castro some close friends among left-wing intellectuals, such as Portuguese Nobel prize winning writer Jose Saramago and Uruguayan journalist and author Eduardo Galeano. REUTERS/Andrea Comas |