Raúl Rivero

In 1999 Rivero was awarded Columbia University's Maria Moors Cabot prize for International Journalism.

He spent his first 11 months in a tiny one-man cell with no windows or any contact to the outside world.

The arrest and imprisonment of Rivero was later defended by Cuban writer and culture minister Abel Prieto who argued that Rivero "was not arrested for his views, but for receiving US funding for his collaboration with a country that has besieged our island.

"[5] Rivero asserted, in prison interrogations as well as in public, that all the funds which he received consisted of fees for his articles, paid by the publishing media, not by governments or political organizations.

[6] In November 2004 he was released following international pressure on Cuba and subsequently relocated to Spain, and was awarded the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize.