HAVANA, Cuba.- From the Combinado del Este prison of maximum rigor, located at kilometer 13 ½ of the Monumental road, in the Guanabacoa municipality of the capital of the island, confidential sources denounce a brutal beating received by the political prisoner Yuri Almenares González on Saturday, July 30.
The sources consulted by CubaNet indicate that at approximately 6:00 pm that day, Yuri Almenares was taken from the warehouse, where he was, to the office of Major Osmani Ramírez Díaz, head of unit 3, to try to force him to wear prisoner’s uniform, and when he refused, the officer beat him so savagely that he split his head and lips and caused several bruises on his forehead.
While this was happening, a guard did not stop beating him all over his body, all with his hands handcuffed behind his back, the source added. They later moved him to the 4th floor of the building.
Seeing the state in which he was left, the 11J protester Duannis Dabel León Taboada, visibly shocked, began to shout in protest at the inhuman retaliation, for which he was transferred to building 1 using a type of torture called “in wheelbarrow”, consisting of the guard inserting his arm through the prisoner’s handcuffs up to the nape of the latter’s neck.
CubaNet also learned that since Monday Major Osmani has been walking around the prison with one hand in a cast. Likewise, the sources insist that after so many days on a hunger strike, Almenares González is very weak and thin.
After the beating, Almenares resumed his hunger strike, and according to information from several inmates, he refuses to wear a prisoner’s uniform because he maintains that his status is kidnapped, not convicted. Precisely that day the political prisoner had been notified that his trial had been postponed again.
In the middle of last July, Almenares González denounced that his trial, announced for Wednesday, July 20, had been suspended without apparent justification.
The news was communicated to him during his admission to the National Hospital by an officer who identified himself as Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Quintana, second national head of Reeducation of the National Directorate of Jails and Prisons, located at 15 and K, in Vedado, municipality Square. During the meeting, the soldier reiterated the accusation for which he will be prosecuted: “enemy propaganda of a continuing nature”, and informed him (verbally) that a prosecutor’s petition for one to seven years in prison weighed against him.
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