"Congratulations on your statement today about the liberating crusade of your government which includes Cuba. Thank you so much," Castro said in a message released late Thursday, run in Cuban media Friday.

The US envoy, Hans Hertell, had said: "What is happening in Iraq is going to send a very positive signal, and it is a very good example for Cuba, where we saw that last week the Fidel Castro regime ordered the arrest of more than 80 citizens, none of them criminals, drug traffickers and simply for their ideas, including teachers, poets and journalists."

Hertell, speaking to media in Santo Domingo on Thursday, said the US-led war was the beginning of a campaign aimed at all countries around the world implementing a multiparty democratic system, including Cuba, the only one-party communist system in the Americas.

A countrywide crackdown in Cuba began last month after 34 independent journalists took part in an ethics workshop at the residence of the head of the US Interests Section in Havana, James Cason.

State-run television reported then that the detainees were being held for "provocation" and "subversive activities" allegedly hatched by Cason.

Seventy-five of the dissidents accused of threatening Cuba's national security and collaborating with the United States have received sentences of between six and 28 years in prison.

SPACE.WIRE