Images show activist allegedly getting a government medal

  BY NANCY SAN MARTIN

  The controversy over the role of Cuban dissident Elizardo Sánchez as an alleged government agent deepened Thursday with the release of a videotape
  that purports to show him receiving a medal of honor from a high-ranking state security agent.

  The internationally recognized human rights advocate, who last month was the focus of a government-sponsored book claiming he was a snitch, told
  reporters in Havana he didn't clearly recall the taped incident unveiled before the foreign press. But Sánchez was adamant about never having collaborated
  with government

  agents, even as he again acknowledged having met with them dozens of times over the years.

  ''You can believe the totalitarian regime, or believe me,'' Sánchez, head of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, told
  journalists at his Havana home, the Associated Press reported.

  ''I am at peace with my conscience, and time will tell,'' said Sánchez, a former professor of Marxism who advocates dialogue with the government to achieve
  peaceful change in Cuba.

  Still unclear is why the government chose to discredit Sánchez six months after an island-wide roundup that landed 75 dissidents in jail. Many in the United
  States and Cuba believe the smear campaign is an attempt by President Fidel Castro's government to further erode the opposition movement.

  ''In the worst of cases, Elizardo is a government agent; but in that case he obviously didn't do the work the government wanted him to,'' Vladimiro Roca,
  another prominent dissident, told The Herald in a telephone interview from Havana. ``Otherwise, they wouldn't have done what they did.''

  With the return to Cuba of Eloy Gutíerrez-Menoyo, a former rebel commander turned opposition leader, some people on the island have been speculating
  that the government is either permitting or trying to create a loyal opposition movement.

  ''The government either exalts people or assassinates people,'' said Angel De Fana, a leader of the Miami group Plantados, which supports dissidents in
  Cuba. ``I can't figure out why they'd release a little video or book to discredit him. It makes no sense.''

  The videotape follows the Aug. 18 release of a book authored by two journalists affiliated with the state-run media that attempted to out Sánchez as a
  state security informant. The book, titled El camaján, or The Freeloader, displayed several pages of photographs of Sánchez with men identified as
  government security officials.

  One of the photographs depicted a government official placing something on Sánchez's shirt. Sánchez claimed at the time that the official was placing a pen
  in his pocket. But in the taped version of the event, the uniformed colonel with Cuba's Interior Ministry is clearly shown pinning a medal to Sánchez's shirt,
  AP reported.

  ''Congratulations, Elizardo,'' the colonel is heard saying, before the two embrace and share a toast with two other officials. Cuban authorities said the
  ceremony took place on Oct. 28, 1998.

  Earlier in the videotaped ceremony, the small group sang along to a recorded version of the Cuban national anthem and the colonel thanked Sánchez for
  helping authorities identify three CIA officials in a visiting American delegation, according to AP.

  Efforts by The Herald to reach Sánchez by telephone were unsuccessful.

  Although the videotape raised doubt among some about Sánchez's relationship with government agents, other opposition leaders in Cuba remained
  supportive and raised their own questions about the credibility of the tape.

  The tape also did little to deter support of Sánchez in Miami.

  ''I cannot give any credibility to anything coming from the regime, period,'' said Sebastián Arcos Cazabón, who served in a Cuban prison with Sánchez in the
  1980s.

  The 59-year-old Sánchez, who describes himself as a socialist democrat, broke with the government more than three decades ago and has since been a
  vocal critic of human-rights abuses.

  He spent four years in Cuban prisons in the early 1980s and founded the human-rights commission group in 1987.

  Herald staff writers Oscar Corral and Alejandro Landes contributed to this report.