U.S. officials and international human rights groups on Wednesday condemned a new Cuban law that creates a broad, new category of counterrevolutionary crimes for government opponents.

The National Assembly of Peoples Power approved the law Tuesday, along with an overall tightening of the island's penal code, but set the maximum penalty at 20 years in prison, instead of the 30 initially proposed.

Patrick Boudouin, head of the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights Leagues, called the law ``scandalous and said Havana ``has taken off the mask of relative tolerance it wore for the past year.

Reporters Without Borders, a French group that works for freedom of expression, said the new law would severely trouble the 40 or so opposition journalists now active around the island.

The Miami-based Inter American Press Association, which represents about 1,300 news media outlets in North America and Latin America, said the law ``elevates censorship to the status of law.

U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley branded it ``a clear attempt to silence independent thinking and civil society in Cuba.