August 4th., 1997

Luis Lopez Prendes arrested again

CIENFUEGOS, July, 30 (Olance Nogueras Rofes, BPIC) - Yesterday, Tuesday, July 29, the independent journalist Luis Lopez Prendes was arrested, after sustaining an interview with the Committee for the Protection of Journalist (CPJ) of New York.

Elda Prendes, mother of the Independent Press Bureau reporter, declared that the State Security Department officers carrying an arrest warrant transported the journalist to an undisclosed detention facility.

Lopez, had been arrested from July 16, till July 19, at the First National Revolutionary Police Precinct in the Old Havana Municipality. He is constantly being threatened with criminal charges due to his journalist activities out of the scope of control from the Cuban government. The Cuban government is specially sensitive to his denouncement of the propaganda and misinformation associated to the state sponsored International Youth's event currently under way.

The reporter, who was once of the Coordinators for the World Youth's and Students Festival, celebrated in Havana during the summer of 1978, denounced at the time, the widespread corruption in the offices of Luis Orlando Dominguez, who was then First Secretary of the Communist's Party junior branch.

Felix Pereda, vice-president of the Jose Marti Democratic Block, expressed that in the morning of July 30, the whereabouts of Prendes where still unknown. The journalist mother, a sixty-nine- year-old lady, is completely isolated and her health is guarded.