Despite the unusually close diplomatic ties between Caracas and Havana (even their intelligence services are interlinked), President Nicolás Maduro appears to have been caught completely off guard by this week's dramatic announcement.
Under President Raúl Castro, arbitrary arrests have "increased dramatically" in recent years and detainees are often beaten and threatened in custody, according to Human Rights Watch. On Dec. 10, Universal Human Rights Day, Cuban authorities detained 240 people arbitrarily, according to the dissident group Patriotic Union of Cuba.
As shipping executive Jay Brickman was leaving for Miami International Airport for his 50-minute charter flight to Havana, he had no clue the earth was about to shake under his feet.
Constitutional Court Secretary Martín Guzmán announced in a press conference that justices of the country's highest court had agreed with a constitutional appeal filed by the Prosecutor's Office against a previous ruling by a lower court judge. A new trial could begin on Jan. 5.
Among the sharpest memories Guillermo "Bill" Vidal has of being sent from his childhood home in Cuba was waiting in the airport. There he was in 1961, he and his two brothers and so many other kids, distraught, excited, scared, separated from their parents by glass.
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay – The United States has assured Uruguay that "no information exists" to link to terrorist activities to six former Guantanamo prisoners now living in the South American country, Uruguay's President José Mujica said Tuesday. Mujica also showed a letter in which the refugees express their "eternal gratitude."
Facing violence and criminal impunity in their countries of origin, lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have become the latest face of Central American displacement, and they have turned to Costa Rica for refuge.
The Senate report shows that Redha al-Najar was tortured by the CIA for nearly 700 days. He was subjected to isolation in total darkness, sound disorientation techniques, sense of time deprivation, limited light, cold temperatures, sleep deprivation, blaring loud music for 24 hours a day, bad food, and humiliation and degradation such as being made to wear a diaper and having no access to toilet facilities, hooding and shackling.
IGUALA, Mexico – They picked up spent shotgun shells and placed them in plastic baggies for safe keeping. They examined discarded bottles, charred sticks, crusted weather-worn clothes. Over rocks and ridges, to the tops of trees and down in bone-dry riverbeds, the parents were searching for their children's graves.
