Rights group criticizes Cuba in prisoner's death

HAVANA (Reuters) - Amnesty International called the hunger strike death of jailed Cuban activist Orlando Zapata Tamayo a "terrible indictment" of repression on the island and urged Cuban President Raul Castro on Wednesday to release all political prisoners.

The London-based human rights group said "a full investigation must be carried out to establish whether ill-treatment may have played a part" in Zapata's death on Tuesday after 85 days without food.

It said Cuba must be investigated "to verify its respect for human rights."

In the Cuban government's first comment on the case, state-run website www.cubadebate.cu said President Raul Castro expressed regret about Zapata's death that he was neither tortured nor executed and suggested the United States was to blame.

Paraphrasing Castro, the article reported Castro said the death "was the result of a relation with the United States."

"Torture does not exist, there was no torture, there was no execution. That happens at the Guantanamo base," the website quoted Castro as saying at an event on Wednesday in the port of Mariel with visiting Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

Castro referred to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States houses foreign terrorism suspects and has admitted using techniques that are widely considered to be torture while interrogating them.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement it was "deeply saddened" by the death and called on Cuba to free its political prisoners.

Zapata, jailed since 2003 and serving a 36-year sentence for crimes including "disrespect, public disorder and resistance," launched the hunger strike to protest prison conditions, the independent Cuban Human Rights Commission said.

Commission spokesman Elizardo Sanchez faulted Cuban authorities for not doing enough to save Zapata, a 42-year-old plumber from the eastern state of Holguin and disputed Castro's comments about there being no torture in Cuban prisons.

"The real history of Cuba in recent decades belies what General Castro said," he said. "We reaffirm our conviction that Orlando Zapata was the victim of a horrendous crime."

Amnesty International said Zapata's act reflected the desperation of political prisoners in Cuba, who are said by the Cuban Human Rights Commission to number about 200.

U.S. CRITICISM

Zapata was one of 55 jailed Cubans labeled "prisoners of conscience" by Amnesty International.

"Faced with a prolonged prison sentence, the fact that Orlando Zapata Tamayo felt he had no other avenue available to him but to starve himself in protest is a terrible indictment of the continuing repression of political dissidents in Cuba," it said.

The case "also underlines the urgent need for Cuba to invite international human rights experts to visit the country to verify respect for human rights, in particular obligations in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights," the group said.

Cuban authorities consider political prisoners to be "mercenaries" working for the United States to undermine the Cuban government

Zapata's death drew sharp responses from several members of the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, including Republican Representative Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida.

"His murder by the tyrant Fidel Castro and his cowardly jailers will never be forgotten," said Diaz-Balart, a nephew of the first wife of Fidel Castro and one of the former Cuban leader's most ardent opponents in Washington.

In its statement, the U.S. State Department said Zapata's death "highlights the injustice of Cuba's holding more than 200 political prisoners who should now be released without delay."

(Additional reporting by Esteban Israel; editing by Jane Sutton and Cynthia Osterman)