Cuban government is responsible for the death of a dissident, the report said

The Cuban government was responsible for the 2012 death of a prominent political activist who had organized a movement to force the government to allow more freedom, the Cuban government said. a report released Monday by an international human rights organization.

The activist, Oswaldo Payá, was killed in a suspicious car accident in eastern Cuba that his family and supporters always believed was caused by the government.

At the time of his death, Mr. Payá, 60, one of the most prominent members of the Cuban opposition. He had gained international attention for leading a grassroots campaign behind a referendum that would have given Cubans the right to choose the country. political system.

The Cuban authorities had said that the crash occurred after Ángel Carromero, a young Spanish politician who was driving the vehicle Mr. Payá was traveling in, lost control of the wheel and hit a tree. Mr. Carromero was later arrested and sentenced to four years in prison for vehicular manslaughter.

But the independent inquiry, which took a decade to complete and review evidence and testimony from several witnesses, contradicts the government’s findings. Mr Payá’s car was hit by an official government car, causing it to crash, the report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, which is part of the Organization of American States.

Another passenger, Harold Cepero, a rights activist, was also killed.

The commission found “serious and sufficient evidence to conclude that state agents participated in the deaths” of the two men. “Both were subjected to various forms of violence, intimidation, threats, attempts on their lives and finally a car accident that caused their death.”

Cuban officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The island was ruled out of participation in the Organization of American States, which former President Raúl Castro called an “instrument of imperialist domination”. A 2009 resolution lifted that suspension, but Cuba never joined again.

Mr Payá was the founder and leader of the Christian Liberation Movement, a dissident party committed to multi-party democracy on the island, which has been ruled by an authoritarian communist regime for more than six decades.

His efforts culminated in the late 1990s with the Varela Project, a petition calling for a national referendum to overhaul the ruling system, including open elections, freedom of speech and amnesty for political prisoners. The proposal was a defiant rebuke to the iron grip Fidel Castro, then the country’s leader, had on Cuba.

In response, authorities arrested Varela activists and forced some petition signatories to withdraw their signatures. Mr Payá was “under constant surveillance and harassed,” the commission’s report said. The attempt to hold a referendum ultimately failed.

After the car accident, Mr. Carromero was taken to a hospital where he was surrounded by soldiers, the report said. He explained that another car had hit them and forced them off the road, but a Cuban official insisted there had been no collision.

“Of course, I replied, that was a lie, that there had not been an accident, but a blatant assault. He punched me in the face,” Mr Carromero told the international commission. He has said the government has pressured him to support their version. He also told the committee that the official said, “Your future will depend on your confession.”

The commission called on Cuba to offer reparations for the human rights violations committed against Mr Payá and Mr Cepero, to launch a thorough investigation to clarify what happened and to punish those responsible.

“Government officials tried to blame their deaths on a car accident, but the Payá family knew better,” said Kerry Kennedy, the president of Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, the group that brought the case to the Human Rights Commission. video posted on Twitter.

Mr. Payá, a charismatic leader, posed a legitimate threat to the regime, said Angelita Baeyens, the Kennedy Organization’s vice president of international advocacy and litigation.

“They couldn’t just kill him,” she said. “They had to silence him in a way that looked like an accident or he would become a martyr, which he did.”

Ms. Baeyens acknowledged that the commission’s findings were largely symbolic, as Cuba will almost certainly not comply with the panel’s recommendations.

“This verdict proves what we always knew, which is that the Cuban regime killed my father and Harold Cepero on orders that could not have come from anyone but the top of the Cuban intelligence apparatus,” said Rosa María Payá, Mr. Payá’s daughter .

Ms. Payá founded an initiative, CubaDecide, in 2015 to transform Cuba’s repressive political system.

“We have lived with the pain of the Cuban regime that killed my father,” she said. “We have seen the great failure of the dictatorship, which killed the man but failed to kill his legacy.”