HAVANA, July 29: The widow of Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya has rejected a government report that blamed the car crash that killed her husband on the driver because she has been denied access to witnesses of his death.
Ofelia Acevedo criticized the government for not allowing her to talk to the two survivors of the crash, including the driver, who have been kept in custody since the July 22 incident in southeastern Cuba.
“I reject this report because it is the official report of the government of Cuba and because I have not had access to this information that they say they have,” she told. “I have no reason at all to believe this version of events.”
The government insists Paya, 60, was killed when the rental vehicle in which he was riding went out of control and struck a tree.
In a lengthy report issued Friday, the Interior Ministry said the driver, Spanish political activist Angel Carromero, lost control of the vehicle when he abruptly hit the brakes on the slippery surface of an unpaved section of road while speeding.
Paya’s family, however, has said it had information that the rental car was driven off the road by another vehicle.
Acevedo said she had not yet been able to talk to Carromero, 27, or the other survivor, Swedish political activist Jens Aron Modig, also 27.
“They were the last people who saw my husband alive and they have to know a lot more than I do so far,” she said.
Authorities have kept the two witnesses in custody since they were discharged from hospital after being treated for injuries they suffered in the crash. Both men were in Cuba on tourist visas.
Acevedo said she did not believe the government’s account of what Carromero said about the accident because “he has not had access to the communications media, outside the presence of state security, which has had him sequestered since he came out of the hospital.”
Paya’s widow said she had asked the ambassadors of Spain and Sweden to arrange for her to speak to Carromero and Modig but “not even they have been able to speak with them without the presence of state security.”
Carromero, who is being held by police in a town close to where the crash occurred, faces charges of traffic violations resulting in death, which can carry up to 10 years in prison under Cuba’s penal code.
In Madrid, Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo confirmed Carromero was still being held in Cuba, and could possibly be charged tomorrow or on Tuesday once the investigation was over. (Agencies)
Trending Now
E-Paper
Follow our WhatsApp channel