Cuban Police Detain Female Activists

Cuban police have detained wives and mothers of political dissidents at a demonstration in Havana, reports BBC News.

About 30 members of the "Ladies in White" were stopped as they marched alongside the mother of a prisoner who died last month after a hunger strike.

They were demanding the release of some 50 government critics who are still being held after mass arrests in 2003.

The BBC understands that most of the women detained in Havana were released shortly afterwards.

Orlando Zapata Tamayo was the first Cuban activist to starve himself to death in protest in nearly 40 years.

The case of Zapata, declared a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, drew international condemnation and calls for the immediate release of all Cuba's detained dissidents.

Cuba's authorities have gone on the offensive, both at home and abroad, since the international outcry, the BBC's Michael Voss reports from Havana.