Cuban blogger says she was detained by cops

HAVANA - Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez, winner of several international prizes, said that she was detained for 20 minutes and mistreated by police while on her way to a non-violent demonstration.

Sanchez told EFE Friday that she was walking down a street in Havana with other bloggers when they were stopped by state security agents who asked them to go with them, which they refused to do and demanded that the policemen show them arrest warrants.

In response to the bloggers’ resistance, the police forced them into two vehicles and mistreated them “physically and verbally” before dropping them off in another part of the city 20 minutes later, said Sanchez who was already at home when she made the statement.

“I was kidnapped in the worst Sicilian style, with verbal and physical violence, armlocks, kneeing me,” Sanchez said about the incident, which was confirmed by other bloggers.

The police procedure was similar to that frequently applied to political dissidents, which the outlawed Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation calls “low intensity repression”.

With her blog “desdecuba.com/Generacin Y”, Sanchez, 34, won Spain’s Ortega y Gasset digital journalism prize and the US Maria Moors Cabot prize, among others, that she has not been able to receive because she is barred by the authorities from leaving Cuba.

–EFE