Cuba: Welcome to The Pen

The Reagan Administration has long been trying to brand Fidel Castro a violator of human rights. But Cuba denies U.S. charges that it holds several thousand political prisoners and that some are being kept in dungeon-like jails and have been tortured. Last week a five-member panel from the International Committee of the Red Cross began a month-long inspection tour of 15 prisons, the first time the organization has been given permission to make such an investigation. The group's first stop was the Boniato jail, where the investigators reportedly found no plantados, the counterrevolutionaries who allegedly have come in for harsh treatment because they refuse rehabilitation.

Castro may have decided to permit the ICRC inspection for good reason. Last month Cuba was elected to serve on the United Nations Human Rights Commission, and one of the panel's teams is to visit the island in August.