HAVANA – The remains of Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata were exhumed Tuesday at the request of his family, who plan to cremate his body and take the ashes to the United States.
Zapata’s mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, told Efe by telephone from the eastern town of Banes that she and three of her late son’s colleagues witnessed the exhumation.
“It has been a very tough, very tough moment, but we have endured,” she said, stressing that authorities have fully complied with her wishes.
Orlando Zapata was among the “Group of 75” dissidents jailed in March 2003 amid Cuba’s harshest political crackdown in decades. He died in February 2010 after a lengthy hunger strike aimed at forcing the Cuban government to acknowledge his designation by Amnesty International as a prisoner of conscience.
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