A US federal judge has ordered the Cuban government and the ruling Communist Party to pay $27.5 million in damages to the mother of a journalist jailed since a 2003 crackdown on dissent. US District Judge Alan S Gold on Wednesday ruled in the case of Omar Rodriguez Saludes, who is serving a 27-year sentence in Cuban prisons that the judge described as "deplorable and degrading" in his 13-page order.
“This is a landmark ruling that shows clearly, as a matter of law, that the relatives of a living political prisoner are entitled to be compensated for intentional infliction of emotional distress,” the plaintiff's attorney, Pedro Martinez-Fraga told the International Press Institute (IPI). “The Cuban Communist Party has been found to be a part of the government and therefore liable for punitive damage.”
IPI Director David Dadge said, “IPI has been campaigning for the release of Omar Rodriguez Saludes. That has yet to happen. However, yesterday a legal precedent was set which we hope will help strengthen the protection of human rights as a universal value. We welcome the ruling and emphasise its value in terms of affirming universal principles.”
Rodriguez, director of the independent news agency Nueva Prensa Cubana in Havana, was arrested during the infamous Black Spring, or ‘Primavera Negra,’ March 2003 crackdown on Cuba’s political dissidents and independent journalists. On April 22, 2003, Rodriguez was sentenced to 27 years in prison - the longest sentence handed down to any of the 29 journalists arrested in the crackdown.
Following Rodriguez’s sentence, Miami-based attorney Martinez-Fraga initiated a lawsuit on behalf of the journalist’s mother, Olivia Saludes, a US resident. In the suit, Martinez-Fraga referred to the US Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA), a 220-year-old law that allows US courts to hear cases brought by foreign citizens over conduct committed outside the United States “in violation of the law of nations or a treaty of the United States.”
On September 12, 2008, Federal Judge Alan Gold accepted the arguments of the plaintiff, stating that Rodriguez “was arrested and detained without being informed of the criminal charges, was convicted in a summary trial and sentenced to 27 years, presumably due to his journalistic activities.” He added that “the treatment and conditions of confinement qualify as torture.”
“The outrages committed during [Rodriguez’s] detention, the days spent under interrogation in the dungeons of the political police, completely isolated, the summary trial and the atrocious conviction as well as all what he experienced in the past six years of detention, are the arguments filed with the Federal Court of the Southern District of Florida, “Rodriguez’s uncle Miguel Saludes told IPI in a May 2009 interview. He said the lawsuit was based on “the situation of [Rodriguez’s mother] Olivia, who has been suffering under various health problems, which began or were exacerbated since the sentence against her son was pronounced, and were caused by that. […]All our family members have suffered the consequences of this tragedy.“
The Cuban government did not respond to the suit.
