'There are no tortured prisoners, there have been no tortured prisoners, there was no execution. That happens at the (US Naval) base of Guantanamo,' Castro was quoted as saying.

Zapata Tamayo, 42, a bricklayer, had been serving a 36-year jail sentence for wrongdoings such as 'disrespect,' 'public disorder,' 'resistance' and 'disobedience.' In prison since 2003, Zapata Tamayo was a member of the dissident group Republican Alternative.

He died Tuesday after an 83-day hunger strike.

The Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN), an umbrella organization of dissidents, said that some 30 dissidents were arrested or detained in their homes Wednesday. The measures appeared aimed at preventing dissidents from attending Zapata Tamayo's funeral, the grouip said.

'A wave of political repression has been unleashed,' Elizardo Sanchez, spokesman for CCDHRN, told the German Press Agency dpa.

Cuba's official website, Cubadebate.cu, initially said in its headline that Castro 'laments' the death of the dissident, then removed the word, and still later revived the 'laments' version.

The world 'lament' was only used in the headline, there was no use of the word or a similar expression in the text of the story.

Zapata Tamayo was one of 55 prisoners of conscience who have been adopted by the rights organization Amnesty International (AI). AI called for a probe on whether mis-treatment 'may have played a part' in Zapata Tamayo's death.

Fellow-dissident Oswaldo Paya said the man suffered 'many insults, racist contempt, beatings and abuse on the part of his jailers and of state security.'

'Zapata was murdered, slowly, for many days and many months in all the prisons where he was held,' Paya said in a statement.

The deceased dissident's mother told famous Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez that her son had been the victim of 'premeditated murder.'

'My son has been tortured all the time he was in prison,' Reina Luisa Tamayo was quoted as saying.

'With my profound pain I ask the world to demand the freedom of the remaining prisoners, of the remaining brothers who are unfairly in jail, so that what has happened with my son does not happen again,' she said.

On Wednesday, Castro was visiting the Cuban port of Mariel with Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. Lula, who arrived in Cuba late Tuesday, did not comment on Zapata Tamayo's death.

   Sanchez, of the CCDHRN, spoke of a 'wave of arbitrary arrests and house detentions on the part of the state's security forces across the country, with a special emphasis on eastern provinces.'

Arrests took place in Holguin, where Zapata Tamayo lived and where he was set to be buried Wednesday, and also in Santiago de Cuba, Guantanamo, Las Tunas and Camaguey, Sanchez said.

   The dissident, who died at a hospital in Havana, was to be buried in Banes, about 800 kilometres east of Havana. His body arrived there Wednesday.

Sanchez said other remembrance ceremonies were to be held across the country. Photographs of the dissident were being distributed for the ceremonies.

According to the CCDHRN, Zapata Tamayo is the first dissident to die in Cuban prisons since 1972.

   Human rights organizations denounced that there are around 200 political prisoners in the communist island. The Cuban government denies that there are any political prisoners in Cuba, and says all prisoners have been arrested and condemned based on the law.

The US State Department said Wednesday that the death of Zapata Tamayo 'highlights the injustice of Cuba's holding more than 200 political prisoners who should now be released without delay.'

State Department spokesman PJ Crowley said the United States had raised the case of Orlando Zapata Tamayo with Cuban officials and called on Havana to release all political prisoners. He said Washington had grown increasingly concerned about Zapata's incarceration and poor health.

Spain, which holds the rotating presidency of the European Union (EU), also deplored the death.

'Both Spain and the EU are going to keep working so that there is a transition, a full democratic transition in Cuba, in which the Cuban people plays the leading role, as soon as possible,' Spain's Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega told the European Parliament in Brussels.

The Spanish European Union presidency has encouraged the 27-nation bloc to upgrade its relations with Cuba, arguing that the union's current policy of strictly linking dialogue with human rights has yielded few results.

Spain had also expressed concern for Zapata's health at a recent bilateral Spanish-Cuban meeting in Madrid, government sources said.