After 85 days on hunger strike, Cuban political prisoner diesCuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo, an Amnesty International prisoner of Conscience, died today after 85 days on hunger strike, during which he was brutalized and force-fed, family members said.
"We can consider it a judicial assasination," announced Elizardo Sanchez, president of Cuba's Human Rights and National Reconciliation Commission
Zapata's death marks the first time in 40 years that a Cuban political prisoner has succumbed during a hunger protest and his death was expected to a trigger wave of political unrest on the Communist ruled island.
"The death of my son was premeditated murder, may he rest in peace, and may the Castro dictatorship be held to account for his death," his mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, said.
Zapata died between 15.30 and 1600 local time the Spanish news agency Efe reported.
Not since 1972 when Pedro Luis Boitel, a poet and student leader who fought against both the Fulgencio Batista and Fidel Castro dictatorships starved himself to death, has an opponent of the communist government continued a hunger protest to the death.
Leonard Doyle