Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a friend of...

Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a friend of Fidel Castro, condemned the death penalty "anywhere and for any reason," in reply to US writer Susan Sontag, who said she was troubled that the Colombian writer had not condemned the April 11 executions in Cuba. The Colombian writer, who won the 1982 Nobel prize for literature, and the Cuban revolutionary have been friends for years. Garcia Marquez told the newspaper El Tiempo "as a rule I do not reply to unnecessary or provocative questions, wherever they come from, even if they come from -- as in this case -- a person so deserving and respectable." "As far as the death penalty is concerned, I have nothing to add to what I have said in private and in public for as long as I can remember: I am against it, anywhere and for any reason, under any circumstances."