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HAVANA: At least 16 Cuban dissidents were released Thursday after police arrested them earlier in sweep targeting government opponents across the communist island, opposition sources said.
"At least 16 of around 20 of those detained are already free," said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation CCDHRN.
Sanchez, whose rights group is officially illegal, told reporters that another four of those arrested had not yet arrived at their homes.
Leading dissident Martha Beatriz Roque earlier said as many as 40 government opponents had been targeted in the regime's roundup.
Another opposition leader, Vladimiro Roca, called the sweep "a giant act of repression throughout the entire country."
He said it targeted above all else dissidents in Havana "because we were planning to hold a meeting here and they did not give permission" for it.
The brief arrests come just days after the European Union decided to formally lift sanctions against Cuba imposed following a 2003 dissident crackdown on the island.
Since officially becoming president in February, Raul Castro, 77, has allowed Cubans to buy computers, own mobile telephones, rent cars and spend nights in hotels previously only accessible to foreigners - if they can afford such luxuries.
But the arrests suggest he may also be as resistant as his older brother Fidel to granting political freedoms to the opposition, critics said.
- AFP/yb
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