Posts Tagged ‘Toledo’
Written by admin on 25 February 2010
Toledo (Spain), Feb 25 (IANS/EFE) The Spanish government has said that it ‘deeply deplores’ the death of Cuban dissident Orlando Zapata Tamayo and regrets that the human rights situation on the communist-ruled island has led to ‘this very terrible outcome’.
Zapata, 42, died Tuesday at a Havana hospital after an 85-day hunger strike.
This fact ‘truly demonstrates that there is a deficit in (Havana’s) human rights policy,’ third Deputy Prime Minister Manuel Chaves said Wednesday during a press conference here.
Chaves said that the Spanish government ‘has always been concerned about the human rights situation’ and he recalled that Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s administration expressed ‘its great concern’ about Zapata’s health in talks with Cuban officials last week.
Spain’s main opposition Popular Party (PP) demanded that Madrid suspend its dialogue with Havana after Zapata’s death.
The PP’s Jorge Moragas also asked the socialist government to withdraw its plan to convince the European Union to ease the bloc’s policy toward the Havana regime.
Moragas, in remarks to EFE, said that the Spanish administration should interrupt its relationship with Raul Castro’s government in view of the persecution that the latter continues to use against opponents.
The Spanish foreign ministry took an interest in Zapata’s case within the framework of the dialogue meeting held Feb 18 in Madrid to discuss human rights and the situation of Cuban political prisoners, ministry sources said Wednesday.
They said the Spanish delegation, led by ministry Director-General Alfonso Lucini, expressed to the Cubans their ‘concern’ about the news regarding Zapata’s worsening health situation and about the health of other jailed dissidents.
The dialogue on human rights between Spain and Cuba was agreed to in April 2007 during the visit that Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos made to Havana, a trip that opened up a new phase in the bilateral relationship.
Zapata was one of 75 government opponents rounded up and jailed in Spring 2003 on charges of conspiring with the US to undermine the Cuban Revolution. While some of those dissidents have since been freed on medical grounds, more than 50 remain behind bars on the communist-ruled island.
Officials added years to Zapata’s original sentence because of his repeated protests over prison conditions.
He began the hunger strike in December after authorities denied him permission to wear white – the colour of Cuba’s dissidents – instead of the standard prison uniform.
Though dissidents put the number of political detainees at 201, Zapata was one of a much smaller number designated by Amnesty International as prisoners of conscience.
This is the first time that an opponent of the Castro regime has died during a hunger strike since Pedro Luis Boitel, the student leader who fought the governments of both Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro, died in prison in 1972.
–IANS/EFE
rd/jg
Tags: Spain, Toledo
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Written by admin on 22 January 2010
Toledo (Spain), Jan 22 (DPA) Plans by the US to close the Guantanamo Bay prison facility in Cuba remain unchanged despite the passing of a self-imposed Jan 22 deadline, US Secretary of State for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said Friday.
Guantanamo would be closed, even if it took ‘more time,’ Napolitano said in Toledo, Spain, where she had attended a European Union interior ministers meeting Thursday.
The secretary of state attributed the closure delay partly to difficulties in obtaining sufficient information on the facility’s inmates so they could be moved elsewhere.
She thanked European countries for their willingness to receive detainees, but stressed the need to proceed correctly, and said the operation was moving ‘in a good direction’.
Spain has promised to take two inmates from Guantanamo. Their nationalities have not been given, but Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad al-Malki said Friday that one of them was a Palestinian.
The man was a Gaza resident who had gone to work in Saudi Arabia and was detained in Pakistan, al-Malki said during a visit to Madrid.
Spain and the Palestinian authorities would discuss repatriating the prisoner to Palestinian territories, the minister said, explaining the man had not fought in Afghanistan and had no links with the Taliban or with Al Qaeda.
Tags: Spain, Toledo
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Written by admin on 21 January 2010
Toledo (Spain), Jan 21 (DPA) The question of how to stop terrorists breaching Europe’s airports topped the bill Thursday as European Union interior ministers met the US’ top security official in the Spanish city of Toledo.
European states have been scrambling to improve their security since Christmas Day, when a passenger on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit allegedly tried to detonate a bomb on board. The issue took on even greater urgency Wednesday after a man with a suspect package ran loose in Munich airport.
US Secretary of State for Homeland Security Janet Napolitano is expected to push EU ministers to tighten up their security, including a call for more use of controversial whole-body scanners, which look under a passenger’s clothes to produce an image of their body, officials said.
Ministers at the informal talks are also tipped to debate the efficiency of other security procedures, such as the current limits on the amount of liquids passengers can carry on board an aircraft.
And they are expected to widen their debate to discuss how each country can improve its relationship with aggrieved minorities, especially Muslim ones, in a bid to crack down on radicalisation and terrorist recruitment.
The question of body scanners is likely to be the most controversial. In 2008, the EU’s executive, the European Commission, called for EU-wide rules governing their use as part of a general overhaul of the bloc’s security laws.
The European Parliament blocked that proposal, arguing that the scanners violated the passenger’s privacy and human rights. The move left each EU state to decide whether it would use the machines.
But the Detroit attack led to renewed calls for EU-wide rules on the scanners.
On Jan 7, EU civil aviation experts agreed that the bloc should use common rules on airport security, including scanners. Most EU states are linked in the passport-free Schengen zone, which removes most identity and security checks on travellers.
Commission officials said that they were ‘considering an initiative on imaging technology to reinforce passenger security’ which would guarantee passenger privacy.
Any such proposal would have to meet with the political approval of member states.
Tags: Spain, Toledo
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