Carromero trial date set: Oct. 5

Prensa Latina reports that Spanish political activist Angel Carromero, who was driving the car in which dissidents Oswaldo Paya and Harold Cepero died July 22, will be tried October 5 in Bayamo on charges related to the accident.

And the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl reports in his column today that he was visited by Rene Iglesias, a former associate of Paya.  Iglesias, making rounds in Washington, roughly repeated the story he told Radio Marti last month about text messages that went from Cuba to Sweden the day of the accident, saying that the car Carromero was driving had been forced off the road.  He also gave an account that is similar, but not in all details, to that of Paya’s daughter regarding information the family says it gathered from the hospital in Bayamo the day of the accident.   

Iglesias has not seen the texts; he heard about them from a Spaniard who heard about them from a Swede.  On Radio Marti, Iglesias complained about the “hiding of the truth” by those who won’t divulge the texts.

“We need to sit down and negotiate”

I noted the other day that Alan Gross’ new lawyer, Jared Genser, has filed a petition with a UN body seeking a judgment that Gross is victim of “arbitrary detention.”

In a statement (pdf), Genser has also called for an independent doctor to examine Gross.  He also questions Cuba’s just-reiterated willingness to discuss ways to get Gross released, saying that “Cuban government officials have been unwilling to put a concrete proposal on the table.”  Of course, there is no “table” because there are no talks.  (See State Department views in this AP story.)

Meanwhile, Judy Gross, wife of Alan Gross, gave an interview to our friend Mauricio (audio here) on his radio program where she evinces a more normal understanding of how negotiations work: first the two sides meet, then they decide if there is a basis for making proposals and counterproposals. 

“I desperately need the U.S. government to do more,” she says, noting that “the U.S. government sent Alan on this project to Cuba” and citing U.S. officials’ “moral obligation to try as hard as they can.”  “If they don’t press for Alan’s freedom and sit down and talk with President Castro he’s not going to come home,” she says, noting that talks should be tried regardless of anyone’s doubts about Cuban intentions.  “We need to try as much as we can to sit down and negotiate.”

Odds and ends

·         Alan Gross’ new lawyer, Jared Genser, appeals to a UN body to declare that Gross is victim of “arbitrary detention.”

·         Responding to objections by Senators who are opposed to the people-to-people travel program itself, the Administration is tightening standards for approving license applications and the process is slowing down.  See stories in Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and the Herald.

·         Herald: To protest government harassment of dissidents, 13 are starting a hunger strike.

·         Reuters on Cuba’s failure to attract new foreign investment.

·         The key link in the scheme whereby Rep. David Rivera allegedly funded a political nobody to run in the Democratic primary and attack Joe Garcia, who won and is now the nominee, is Republican campaign consultant Anna Alliegro.  Through her lawyer she agreed to an FBI interview but she didn’t show up and is now missing.  Herald story here.  More here on Rivera’s handling of the matter with the media, and here’s an op-ed in El Nuevo asking when Republican leaders and voters will walk away from Rivera.

·         Herald: Recent Cuban defectors prefer Tampa over Miami.

·         NPR on plans to refurbish the ballet school in western Havana.

Santos: Colombia peace talks begin next month

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced (text here) that talks between his government and the FARC guerrillas will begin in October in Oslo and then move to Havana.  The “framework agreement” is the result of six months of talks in Havana, which built upon “channels that the previous government had established,” he said (AP, El Tiempo).

Santos said the talks will proceed without a ceasefire or concessions of territory, as occurred in an earlier attempt at negotiation.  They will cover rural development and access to land; guarantees for the exercise of political opposition and citizen participation; end of the armed conflict; drug trafficking; and the rights of victims.

Santos thanked the Cuban and Norwegian governments for their support, saying: “Without their presence it would not have been possible to come to this point.”  Cuba and Norway will serve as “hosts and guarantors” in the talks, he said, while Venezuela and Chile will be “companions.”

Odds and ends

·         El Tiempo: Colombian President Santos will speak about the talks with FARC rebels aimed at ending that country’s five-decade-old conflicto.  One hour later, the FARC will hold a press conference in Havana, AP reports.

·         FT: In London, an ambitious plan to restore and expand the ballet school at the Escuela Nacional de Arte in western Havana.

·         Washington Post: In North Korea, they are allowing farmers to sell their surplus on the open market.  Imagine that.

·         AP: New customs duties are now in effect and some travelers are getting clobbered.  An earlier AP look ahead on the possible impact on entrepreneurs here.

"We are convinced Angel is innocent"

Borja Alcedo, a close friend and Partido Popular colleague of Angel Carromero, gave an interview to Onda Cero radio in Spain (audio here).  He said Carromero called him as soon as the accident occurred, but was only able to communicate that he was in an accident before the call broke up.  He said Carromero’s mission was personal and not connected to the PP.  Carromero has since phoned Alcedo from prison.  “We are convinced Angel is innocent,” he says in the interview.  “We think the accident was caused by the bad condition of the road and we hope the trial establishes that.”

Quotable

"If the dissident movement intends to turn itself into a political alternative it will need to travel a more independent and home-grown path that gathers the hopes and demands of part of the Cuban people and adds them together, converting itself into a force that has social weight.

"But this path doesn’t pass through Madrid or Stockholm, and no Nordic sorcerer’s apprentice will know as much about Cuba as Cubans themselves.  The advisers that the dissidents need are much closer than they imagine; they are their own compatriots."

   – BBC correspondent Fernando Ravsberg, in his weekly column

Odds and ends

·         A Colombian radio station published the purported text of the agreement reached between Colombia’s government and FARC guerrillas to start peace talks.  English here, with a link to the Spanish original at the bottom of the page.  More from EFE (English) and good historical background from the Wall Street Journal.

·         The spokesman for Oswaldo Paya’s Christian Liberation told Radio Marti that he and a colleague were told by Cayetana Muriel Aguado, a Spaniard resident in Sweden who is a member of that country’s Christian Democratic Party, that “political figures” in Sweden and Spain received text messages from the phones of Angel Carromero and Aron Modig “denouncing that they had been victims of an accident provoked by a car that was following them.”  The spokesman, Rene Iglesias, complained about the “hiding of the truth” that is occurring, he guesses, to spare Carromero some jail time, and he urged those who possess the text messages to release them.  He said the meeting with Aguado occurred the night of the July 22 crash.  The full string of earlier posts on this event is here. 

·         Vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s Cuba convictions are now safely in cold storage.  But just for old times’ sake, Geoff Thale of the Washington Office on Latin America counts up the Cuba votes in Ryan’s record and finds 20 votes cast in favor of easing or ending the embargo out of 24 Cuba votes he cast between 2000 and 2007.

·         Yagruma, a crowdfunding site that offers the opportunity to support artistic projects in Cuba, had its PayPal account blocked because sending money to Cuba is an apparent embargo violation, and is working on setting up a payment mechanism that will not be affected by U.S. sanctions.

·         Café Fuerte:  Writer Raul Hernandez recounts, with some skepticism, a story told in Granma about a former Communist Party official who is now raising and selling pigs and making money hand over fist.