Cuban television revealed on Saturday, Feb. 26, that an ardent anti-Castro, independent journalist is actually a State agent, according to the news agency DPA.
Carlos Serpa, a frequent contributor to the U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Martí and close to the group of families of political prisoners known as the “Ladies in White,” was identified as “agent Emilio” in the document “Pawns of the Empire,” broadcast by Cubavisión, reported Reuters.
The document refers to Cuban dissidents as "mercenaries" and "servile," and Serpa accuses them of having "sold their souls to the devil."
“I am a manufactured dissident. My case is an example of how it is possible to make people outside the country believe that here there exists a 'great' opposition and proliferation of 'anti-Castro' groups," he said in an interview published by the newspaper Juventud Rebelde. An English version of the interview is available here.
Serpa also said he had invented news, and he accused Radio Martí of not confirming anything. Along with Serpa another agent was identified as having infiltrated dissident ranks, Radio Martí said.
The revelation comes as the government is fulfilling its agreement to release political prisoners, most of whom have gone into exile in Spain.
See here two videos with English subtitles, posted by Huffington Post, about the document on the Cuabn government web page Razones de Cuba.
» Noticia al Día (Blogger Yoani Sánchez's take on the spy (in Spanish)
Note from the editor: This story was originally published by the Knight Center’s blog Journalism in the Americas, the predecessor of LatAm Journalism Review.
