martes, 31 de julio de 2012

Spaniard charged with vehicular manslaughter in highway crash that killed ... - Washington Post

Under the penal code, a person convicted of violating traffic laws or rules resulting in the death of another can be sentenced to one to 10 years in prison.

In videotaped testimony played for journalists Monday, Carromero said he lost control of the car when it suddenly entered an unpaved area of road under construction and he slammed on the brakes, causing it to skid.

An investigation found that Carromero was speeding and failed to heed traffic signs warning of the construction, and Cuban authorities had hinted earlier that charges might be forthcoming. Another dissident, Harold Cepero, also died in the crash.

A spokeswoman for Spain's Foreign Ministry said her ministry had not been notified of any change in Carromero's legal status. She spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.

Granma said Carromero and Swedish citizen Jens Aron Modig, who was also riding in the car when it crashed, entered the country July 19 on tourist visas and, "in violation of their migratory status, got involved in clearly political activities contrary to the constitutional order."

Both Carromero and Modig are affiliated with conservative political parties in their home countries. They said they came to Cuba to bring 4,000 euros ($4,900) for Paya's organization and help organize dissident youth wings.

Cuba's government considers the small opposition groups to be subversive, and objects to foreign-based efforts to support them.

Granma pointedly said that Modig had been allowed to return to Sweden "in spite of the illegal activities he carried out."

On Tuesday he tweeted: "Have European soil under my feet. So nice!"

In the long, unsigned editorial titled "Truth and Rightness," which took up half of the newspaper's first two pages, Granma fulminated against what it called a series of "counterrevolutionary" attempts against its sovereignty.

"This operation is one more among many, organized principally from Miami and also from Madrid and Stockholm," it said, blaming Cuban exiles' longtime desire to see the end of the island's Communist system headed earlier by Fidel Castro, and now by his brother Raul.

"They dream of destabilizing the country, creating conditions to repeat what happened in Libya and Syria and provoking a U.S. military intervention," the newspaper said.

The editorial ticked off a list of purported attempts to stir unrest and foment dissent through social media and cell phones, and longtime complaints about U.S. contacts with the dissidents and USAID democracy-building programs.

Since 2009 Cuba has held American citizen and USAID subcontractor Alan Gross, sentenced to 15 years in prison under a statute governing crimes against the state, after he was discovered importing communications equipment onto the island and setting up satellite Internet networks.

Granma also alleged that in March, just before Pope Benedict XVI visited Cuba, eight Mexican youth traveled to the island on tourist visas with the intention of distributing propaganda, inciting protest and disrupting the pontiff's activities.

Granma said four were detained and they were backed by a Florida exile group and Mexico's conservative National Action Party.

It also criticized the U.S. State Department, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and the Chilean presidency for being among a "handful of slanderers" who asked for a transparent probe of the crash that killed Paya.

Soon after the July 22 accident, speculation spread that a second vehicle was pursuing the car carrying Paya and might even have run it off the road, leading dissidents and others to call for transparency in the investigation.

Carromero and Modig said no other car was involved, but Paya's family said it reserved the right to doubt the official account and asked to speak independently with the witnesses.

"I ask the international community to please focus on getting me out of here and not use a traffic accident, which could have happened to anyone, for political purposes," Carromero said Monday.

Paya, 60, headed up the Varela Project petition drive, which gathered 25,000 signatures in the late 1990s and early 2000s urging political change.

It was considered the biggest nonviolent challenge to decades of Communist government, and the European Union selected awarded Paya its Sakharov human rights prize in 2002.

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Associated Press writers Andrea Rodriguez and Anne-Marie Garcia in Havana, Ciaran Giles in Madrid and Louise Nordstrom in Stockholm contributed to this report.

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Follow Peter Orsi on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Peter_Orsi

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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