BY JUAN O. TAMAYO
jtamayo@herald.com

Cuba's secret police Tuesday detained three dissidents in the latest chapter of a three-month long crackdown on opponents that has even targeted a government critic who gave toys to children at Christmas.

Hector Palacios, director of the Internal Opposition Studies Center, and his wife, Gisela Delgador, were picked up at their home by plainclothes officers to keep them from attending a dissidents' meeting Tuesday morning, dissident sources said. They were released Tuesday afternoon.

Oswaldo Paya, head of the Christian Liberation Movement, was also detained Tuesday morning, but there was no word on his whereabouts as of 9 p.m. Cuban authorities often briefly arrest dissidents for hours or days to harass and intimidate them.

Paya is especially respected as a Christian activist and member of the powerful International Christian Democratic movement. ``To touch Oswaldo is a major move, said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and Reconciliation.

Paya, Palacios and Sanchez were among the dissidents who received international recognition in mid-November when they met with five heads of government attending the Ibero-American Summit in Havana.

Sanchez said a police crackdown on dissent launched about that time has now notched some 30 long-term arrests and some 270 one- and two-day detentions.

The number of political prisoners grew last year for the first time in nearly a decade, dissident leaders said, from around 300 to around 340.

``We are living a period of repression . . . when the government is again trying to flatten the opposition, Sanchez said from Havana.