Cuba says dissident died of natural causes

HAVANA (Reuters) - The Cuban government on Monday denied opposition charges that a dissident who died on Sunday had been beaten by police, saying a preliminary autopsy showed he died of natural causes.

Juan Wilfredo Soto was buried on Sunday in the central city of Santa Clara after what dissidents described as a beating by police during a protest last week.

A government statement read on national television accused the dissidents of being "unscrupulous counterrevolutionaries" out to "defame the country" and divert attention from popular support for a recent ruling Communist Party congress and ongoing economic reforms.

It said Soto, 46, was picked up and held for three hours on Thursday "without incident" and then, complaining of abdominal pain, checked himself into a local hospital the next day where he was diagnosed as suffering from an inflamed pancreas.

The statement said the pancreatitis aggravated Soto's pre-existing heart problems, hypertension, and diabetes, among other health issues, resulting in "shock" and his death from "natural causes".

The preliminary autopsy found "no evidence of external or internal violence," the statement said.

Soto was a member of a little-known opposition group in Santa Clara, 171 miles east of Havana, and had served a number of years in prison.

Elizardo Sanchez of the independent Cuban Commission of Human Rights, who said he believed the police beating caused Soto's death, demanded an open investigation of the case and said police were becoming increasingly brutal in their handling of dissent.

(Reporting by Marc Frank; Editing by Jeff Franks and Paul Simao)