(Washington, DC) Judicial Watch, the public interest law firm that investigates and prosecutes government corruption, is sad to announce the death of Eugenio de Sosa Chabau, a heroic champion of Cuban liberation and important plaintiff in the criminal human rights indictment brought by Judicial Watch in the Royal Belgian Court against Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for crimes against humanity.

Chabau, an 85-year-old freedom fighter and icon in Miami’s Cuban exile community, died on January 1 while visiting his children in Dallas, Texas. He will be buried near his Miami home this week.

Chabau was a prominent businessman and editor of the oldest Spanish language newspaper in the Western Hemisphere, Diario de la Marina, in his native Cuba, when he was imprisoned for two decades simply for opposing Castro’s communist regime. Throughout his 20-year sentence, Chabau was tortured in various prisons throughout the island and later at a mental hospital.

His punishment included frequent beatings by prison guards, electric shock and powerful anti-psychotic medications that kept him sedated. He often went days without food or water and was kept in a tiny, dark dirt cell during spurts of solitary confinement.

Though released from prison in 1980, Chabau recently relived some of those horrifying years in prison when he recognized a man who had tortured him with electric shock during his sentence. That man, Eriberto Mederos, a head nurse at a Havana psychiatric hospital, has been charged with obtaining American citizenship fraudulently and is set to stand trial in federal court later this year.

Though frail, Chabau traveled to Belgium in October to join the team of Judicial Watch attorneys who presented the case against Fidel Castro.

“Judicial Watch mourns the passing of Eugenio de Sosa Chabau. He can rest in peace knowing that Judicial Watch will continue to pursue justice for the brutal dictator Fidel Castro and his accomplices,” stated Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman. “Our sympathy and prayers go out to his family and friends at this difficult time, “ Klayman added.