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Castro Seeks Life Sentences for Dissidents - Trial Today - Where's Jimmy Carter? *** The Cuban government has provided no information about the trials and it was unknown if international journalists would be granted access. Authorities here have accused those arrested of being traitors and mercenaries for the U.S. government. Cuban Parliament speaker Ricardo Alarcon said Monday that authorities had sufficient evidence to try the dissidents, adding that most nations had laws "to defend their sovereignty." The crackdown began when Cuban officials criticized the head of the American mission in Havana, James Cason, for his active support of the island's opposition.

Accusations that the detainees engaged in treason and are mercenaries "only show the repressive nature of the Castro regime and its fear of any sign of opposition to its ironclad rule," Roberto Zimmerman, spokesman for the U.S. State Department's Latin America bureau, said in Washington on Wednesday. The Cubans "are being tried for exercising their rights of freedom of expression and association," said Zimmerman.

The roundup followed several years of relative government tolerance for dissidents. During that time, the opposition grew stronger, more organized and more daring. Those arrested included independent journalists, directors of non-governmental libraries, members of opposition political parties and volunteers for the Varela Project, a pro-democracy petition drive.***

Castro's Imbeds Testify Against Dissidents at Circus Trial*** HAVANA - Two reporters who spent years working alongside Cuba's best-known independent journalist revealed at his trial Friday that they were undercover agents as they testified against him, the dissident's wife said. In another trial, of a dissident economist, a longtime secretary told a court that she also worked undercover and had been informing on her employer.

With such stunning courtroom revelations, Fidel Castro's government pressed ahead Friday the prosecution of 80 dissidents accused of working with U.S. diplomats to undermine Cuba's leadership. The well-known independent journalist Raul Rivero was among those being tried Friday in a second day of court proceedings aimed at crushing a small, but growing, opposition movement.

Rivero was being tried alongside Ricardo Gonzalez, the editor of De Cuba, a new general interest magazine publishing the works of Cuban journalists working outside state-controlled media. Prosecutors were seeking 20 years for Rivero and life for Gonzalez after being charged with working with a foreign power to undermine the government. Gonzalez is one of at least a dozen defendants who could face a life sentence. The trials are expected to end early next week with sentences issued days later. ***