Cubans Sentenced to 3 Years for Selling Satellite-TV Gear

CASPER

New member
Cubans Sentenced to 3 Years for Selling Satellite-TV Gear


HAVANA – Several people were sentenced to three years in jail and others to the same length of time doing “correctional labor” for selling equipment to enable Cubans to receive foreign television broadcasts aimed at “discrediting and destabilizing the revolution,” Communist Party daily Granma reported Friday.

The paper said that one of the convicts, Eduardo Isern, who it said “had no job but enjoyed a not insignificant means of support” thanks to “piracy and the illegal transmission of television signals.”

Isern’s clients, according to Granma, illegally access programs broadcast by U.S.-based satellite television provider DirecTV, including “soap operas, music programs, sports and, among others, messages aimed at discrediting and destabilizing the Cuban revolution.”

Another of the convicts, Alejandro Canetti, communicated with his children living in the United States so they would contract DirecTV services there and send to the island the codes and necessary gear to see foreign channels, Granma said.

The ring included a public official, not identified by the daily, who set up an account accessing the Internet, “breaking all the regulations and mechanisms established to guarantee the computer security of his department.”

Cubans only have legal access to state-controlled domestic media and cannot connect privately to the Internet, which the Havana government blames on technical limitations arising from the economic embargo that the United States has imposed on the island since 1962.

Satellite and cable television are only permitted in Cuba to state organizations, tourist installations and foreign residents. EFE
 
Top