Castro defends crackdown 5 years ago, exhorts US to treat inmates as well as Cuba

Ailing former leader Fidel Castro made a rare mention of his government's crackdown on political opponents five years ago, defending the action and exhorting the United States to treat its prisoners with the same humanity he said Cuba uses with its inmates.

"What an enormous difference between the methods of the United States and of Cuba!" Castro wrote in an essay published Monday in state media, apparently referring to how the U.S. government treats terror suspects.

"None of the mercenaries were tortured or deprived of attorney or trial," Castro said of the 75 dissidents rounded up beginning on March 18, 2003. Cuba accused them of being mercenaries working with the United States to undermine the communist government, a charge the dissidents and U.S. officials denied.

Twenty of the original 75 have seen been released, 16 on medical parole and four into forced exile in Spain.

"They have the right to visits, access to (conjugal visits) and all the other legal prerogatives of all inmates," Castro wrote.