Cuba dissident gets 2 years' jail for "false news"

HAVANA, June 12 (Reuters) - A Cuban court has sentenced a dissident union activist to two years' jail for spreading "false news" in an article he wrote last year criticizing local police, family and opposition sources said on Tuesday.

At his one-day trial May 24, the state prosecution had only requested a one-year sentence for Jose Gonzalez Bridon, head of a small dissident group, the Confederation of Democratic Workers in Cuba, who has been in jail since mid-December.

But after deciding to convict him, the court's panel of judges fixed a two-year sentence, according to the sources. They said Gonzalez had been told of the decision in jail and had then sent a letter informing his family.

"We are very upset. It's totally arbitrary to raise it to two years when not even the prosecution had wanted that. But this is a country of violations of human rights," said one supporter, Mercedes Constantin Figueroa, of the dissident Center for Democratic Information group.

The Cuban government, which considers all dissidents "counter-revolutionaries" at the service of U.S. policy against the government of President Fidel Castro and his ruling Communist Party, has not commented on Bridon's case.

Gonzalez wrote an article last year blaming police negligence for the death of an opposition activist who was attacked by her ex-husband. The offending article was carried on the Internet by the U.S.-based Cuba Free Press agency, one of several groups providing an outlet for dissident writers.

Supporters of Gonzalez say Cuban authorities used that article as a pretext to punish him for a dossier of anti- government activities, including a symbolic burying of the Cuban constitution and penal code in his backyard.

He has also written frequent anti-government articles for dissemination abroad, by dictation to Florida, with headlines like "Cuba, a Perfect Dictatorship."

Cuba's small and fragmented dissident movement, which is barred from forming legal opposition parties, poses little threat to Castro's grip on power. Local rights groups estimate around 400 dissidents are currently jailed in Cuba.

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