Moya, other dissidents, detained after confrontation

Posted on Tuesday, 08.14.12

Moya, other dissidents, detained after confrontation
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban police and State Security agents detained former political
prisoner Angel Moya and at least five other dissidents during a search
Sunday of a dissident's home that allegedly sparked a confrontation in
that neighbors threw rocks at the agents.

Some of the activists detained in the Matanzas province town of Pedro
Betancourt were freed Monday afternoon but there was no word on the
whereabouts of Moya, said his wife, Berta Soler, who is the leader of
the dissident Ladies in White.

Pedro Betancourt residents Edilia Moreno and Gulliver Sigler Gonzalez
said the incident Sunday began when agents of the National Revolutionary
Police and State Security searched the home of Felix Sierra.

Moya and five to eight other dissidents who were in a house nearby went
to the Sierra home to witness the raid, they told El Nuevo Herald by
telephone, but were quickly arrested by police "with a lot of violence"
and driven off in patrol cars.

About 500 neighbors had gathered to watch the incident "and when they
saw those abuses some of those people started throwing rocks and sticks
at security agents" who were forced to run away from the crowd, Sigler said.

Sigler said police were about to detain him as well when some of the
onlookers "took me away from the hands of the police" and protected him
until the security forces left the home of Sierra, a member of Moya's
Democratic Freedom for Cuba Movement.

Moreno generally backed up Sigler's version, but there was no way to
independently confirm it. Havana human rights activist Elizardo Sánchez
Santa Cruz said he had received reports that the crowd totaled about 40
people, and that some had thrown rocks.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/08/14/2950358/moya-other-dissidents-detained.html