Spanish government wants PP official jailed in Cuba to be expatriated

Foreign Minister José Manuel García-Margallo said Monday he expects that Ángel Carromero, the Popular Party (PP) youth leader who was charged with negligent homicide in Cuba involving the deaths of two dissidents, could be repatriated in the coming days.

García-Margallo said he expected a verdict for Carromero, who went on trial Friday, sometime this week.

“It is now up to our governments to talk about repatriation as quickly as possible, as soon as we find out the verdict, which will be sometime this week,” he told journalists at a conference held in Casa de América en Madrid.

Carromero, an official of the PP’s youth wing, Nuevas Generaciones, was charged with causing the deaths of dissidents Oswaldo Payá, 60, the leader of the dissident Cuban Liberation Movement, and his assistant Harold Cepero, 31, on July 22. The two dissidents were in Carromero’s rented vehicle when it crashed on road near Bayamo, Cuba, in eastern Granma province.

On Friday, prosecutor Isabel Barzaga asked for a seven-year sentence for Carromero, but the Cuban government has the final word whether he should be expelled from the country.