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NEW YORK, Sept. 28, 2003 (Friends of Cuban Libraries) - On April 5, after a one-day trial before the State Security Court in the city of Santiago, Cuban dissident Julio Valdés was convicted of conspiring with U.S. diplomats to commit "crimes against the national sovereignty and economy of Cuba" and sentenced to 20 years in prison. One of the accusations made against Julio Valdés was the founding of a "self-proclaimed Independent Library" to "ideologically subvert the reader with the clear purpose, by means of inducing confusion, to recruit persons for the counter-revolution..." After sentencing the defendant to 20 years in prison, the judges also condemned Valdes' library materials as "lacking in usefulness" and ordered them to be destroyed by fire. Among the library materials burned by order of the court were pamphlets on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Catholic periodicals, a report by Human Rights Watch and a copy of "Letters From Burma" by Aung San Suu Khi. Thanks to a new Florida State University website featuring the full text of smuggled court documents, the alarming details on the Cuban regime's 21st century version of "Fahrenheit 451" can be found in the "Recent News" section of the Friends of Cuban Libraries website: (www.friendsofcubanlibraries.org). Sincerely, The Friends of Cuban Libraries (WWW.FRIENDSOFCUBANLIBRARIES.ORG)