BAYAMO, Cuba (Reuters) – Cuban authorities released prominent dissident blogger Yoani Sanchez late on Friday after detaining her on the eve of a Spanish activist’s high-profile manslaughter trial in the eastern city of Bayamo.
Sanchez, her husband Reinaldo Escobar, and their driver were taken into custody along with a half dozen other local dissidents on Thursday, said Elizardo Sanchez of the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights.
Yoani Sanchez told Reuters in a telephone interview from her Havana home they were stopped by state security agents after they arrived in Bayamo, 415 miles (668 km) southeast of Havana in their car late Thursday afternoon.
They were taken to a Ministry of Interior facility, separated and treated a little roughly in the beginning, which included female agents who wanted to remove her clothes, Sanchez said. She refused to allow them to do so.
Sanchez said the agents became more cordial, but questioned her for hours and threatened that she would face criminal charges, which never came. About 11 am on Friday, they told her she and her husband would be driven back to their Havana home, where they arrived around 9 pm.
“Now I’m home, with a little stress, but back in my house,” a relieved Sanchez said.
On her Twitter site, Sanchez said she had “many anecdotes to tell” about the experience. Government officials, who often use brief detentions against dissidents, had no comment on the arrests. But government-linked blogger Yohandry Fontana said Sanchez was detained because she had gone to Bayamo intent on creating a “provocation and media show” at the trial of Spaniard Angel Carromero.
