Madrid, Jan 17 (IANS/EFE) A Spanish journalist, behind bars in Cuba since July 2010 on charges of corrupting minors after he filmed a report with a hidden camera about underage prostitution on the island, will soon be freed, his wife said.
The release of Sebastian Martinez Ferrate is being secured after negotiations undertaken by Madrid with the Raul Castro regime, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo said.
Maria Angeles Sola, the wife of the detained journalist, said her husband will be expelled from the island, and will not have to serve in Spain the seven-year sentence imposed on him in August last year by a Cuban court.
Businessman-journalist Martinez Ferrate was arrested in July 2010 upon arrival in Havana on a business trip as director general of a Spanish hotel chain.
He had been on the island in 2008 for a hidden-camera report on underage prostitution that was aired on a Spanish television channel.
In August 2011, he was tried in a Cuban court and sentenced to seven years in prison.
--IANS/EFE
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