HAVANA, Cuba.- From the 3rd floor, south wing of building 1, in the Combinado del Este prison, located at kilometer 13 ½ of the Monumental road, in the Guanabacoa municipality of the capital of the island, 11J protester Dayan Gustavo Flores Brito denounces his imprisonment and subsequent repression as punishment for having participated in the popular protests that took place in Cuba on July 11, 2021.
Flores Brito, 23 years old, denounces that he was arrested on July 16, 2021 at his home, located in the Mantilla neighborhood, belonging to the Arroyo Naranjo municipality, and that according to what the repressors told him, he appeared in a video where I saw him as part of the group that overturned a patrol car near the central corner of Toyo, at the intersection of the Diez de Octubre and Luyanó roads.
The young man points out that they initially locked him up in the Criminal Investigation and Operations Division of 100 and Aldabó, where, as he emphasizes, “he received all kinds of mistreatment during the 35 days he was held captive.” Later, they transferred him to the Valle Grande maximum rigor prison, located in the municipality of La Lisa, where he was kept for 30 days until finally transferred to Combinado del Este, where he is currently being held.
The protester, who adds that he is a musician, faced a prosecutor’s request for 20 years in prison for the alleged crimes of sedition and theft. In a first trial he was sentenced to 18 years on the grounds that he was a ringleader and an antisocial element with links to the opposition. Later, in a second trial, the sentence was set at 14 years in prison.
On several occasions, Cuban activists and political prisoners have denounced that in prisons on the island, inmates are subjected to torture and mistreatment by prison authorities or other prisoners.
Last May, two prisoners were victims of beatings and ill-treatment in cellar number 15 in the Valle Grande prison in Havana, according to political prisoner Pedro Albert Sánchez. The inmates were beaten by the local prison authorities on Sunday, May 8, Mother’s Day. One of them was a 11J protester.
Currently, Prisoners Defenders registers at least 1,015 political prisoners on the Island, most of them after 11J. In a recent complaint filed with the United Nations Committee Against Torture, the organization exposed 101 testimonies of torture in Cuban prisons. One of the 15 patterns of torture and mistreatment identified was, precisely, beatings by prison authorities.
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