Prominent Cuban dissident assaulted

Cuba's most prominent female dissident says she was brutally beaten at her home by a pro-government mob of people who knew she was heading to a meeting at the home of the top US diplomat in Havana.

"I see it as a (government) message to the opposition," ailing economist Marta Beatriz Roque, 60, told AFP on Wednesday at her home, where she showed injuries to her eye, knee and elbow which she said were from the assault a day earlier.

Roque, who opposes the Americas' only one-party communist government, leads the Assembly for Promoting Civil Society.

She was released from prison in July 2004 due to her failing health after she had been convicted and sentenced to 20 years behind bars along with 74 other dissidents following the government's 2003 crackdown, which was the largest in years.

She said she recognised some of the people who beginning at 2130 GMT on Tuesday shouted insults at her and beat her outside and later inside her home in the Havana neighbourhood of Santos Suarez.

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