The news of Oswaldo Paya's death

Oswaldo Paya died in a car accident yesterday afternoon in Granma province, 22 kilometers outside the city of Bayamo.  He was traveling with his colleague Harold Cepero Escalante of Ciego de Avila, who also died, and with two European visitors who both survived: Spanish Partido Popular activist Angel Carromero and Swedish Christian Democratic activist Aron Modig.

A Cuban government spokesman last night said that the group was in a rental car that went out of control and struck a tree (AP report here).  Paya’s daughter told Radio Marti (audio clip in the story) the following:

The information that reached us from the guys who were traveling in the car with him, there was a car trying to get them off the road, running into them all the time.  So we believe that this was not an accident.

Granma carried the story, calling it a “lamentable accident.”

In Madrid, a colleague of Carromero said he suffered a head wound that required three stitches and is “well.”

Spain’s foreign ministry issued a statement saying that both Europeans are “out of danger,” and that the Spanish government “is gathering from Cuban authorities all the pertinent information.”  Spain’s consul general in Havana is going to Bayamo, where the survivors are hospitalized.