Exile Leaders Quit GOP Over Migrants' Return***On Friday, leaders of a leading exile group, Brothers to the Rescue fought back, announcing that the group will renounce their political party affiliation from Republican Party to protest a U.S. decision to send 15 suspected hijackers back to Cuba. They said the move does not mean the group will support the Democrats, but rather that Cuban-Americans will vote for whoever supports their cause.***
US deeply concerned by failing health of jailed Cuban dissident [Full Text] WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States expressed deep concern about the health of jailed Cuban dissident Marta Beatriz Roque and accused Havana of deliberately mistreating her and other incarcerated foes of Fidel Castro's communist government. The State Department also demanded that Cuba immediately release Roque and 74 other dissidents who were arrested in a widespread crackdown on Castro opponents in March and sentenced to lengthy jail terms. "The United States is deeply concerned over the failing health of Cuban political prisoner Marta Beatriz Roque," spokesman Richard Boucher said in a statement.
Roque's family has said she is in critical condition and was transferred last week to a military hospital last week due to high blood pressure, chest pain and nose bleeds. "Her health has worsened since her incarceration," Boucher said. "The Cuban government should provide her with the best possible medical treatment." He said Roque and the other 74 prisoners were being held in inhumane conditions, with little sanitation, contaminated water and nearly inedible food.
"The Cuban government appears to be going out of its way to treat these prisoners inhumanely," Boucher said. "It should immediately cease this practice and, at the minimum, allow the appropriate humanitarian organizations to monitor the treatment of its political prisoners, whose only real crime was to call for peaceful democratic change in Cuba," he said. "Ms Roque and all of the other political prisoners should be released immediately," Boucher added.
Roque, an economist who heads the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, an umbrella organization of dissident groups, is serving a 20-year sentence.