Havana Cuba. – From the Combinado del Este prison of maximum rigor, in the municipality of Guanabacoa, Havana, the political prisoner Yuri Almenares González denounces that he has had to face a rigged criminal trial for being an opponent of the island’s regime.
Born on March 14, 1981 and emigrated to Georgia, United States, on June 22, 2009, Almenares González declares himself a defender of human rights and an activist of the Democratic Civic Movement of the New Arnaldo Zapata Tamayo Republic.
Through an audio recorded by telephone, he narrates how in February 2020 he was falsely accused by Alain Domínguez, a State Security collaborator in Holguín, of the alleged crime of “outrage against national symbols.”
Later, after leaving prison with a fine and according to Almenares González himself, agents of the Political Police fabricated another case for him, this time of “dissemination of false news”, later changed into “continuous enemy propaganda”, for who was sentenced to seven years in prison after spending more than two years in jail without trial.
However, he adds, the delivery of the sentence has been delayed, according to what the authorities told a close relative, because “the Court has not yet reached a ruling.”
In a previous communication, the political prisoner revealed other details of the process against him. In the trial, an alleged opponent from Sancti Spíritus was to appear as a witness, whom Almenares claims not to know and with whom, according to officer Luis Miguel Quiroz Lage, instructor of the case, the accused had exchanged telephone calls.
But since the witness did not show up, the soldier, to justify his absence, alleged that he had taken a statement from her in his province, and added that the mobile phone used by Almenares in the US had a photo of the aforementioned, in addition of the message “I want Díaz-Canel to die, he is starving the people.”
The criminal figure of enemy propaganda is frequently used by the Havana regime to restrict and punish the exercise of the right to freedom of expression and appears typified in the Cuban Penal Code.
According to this law, “Anyone who incites against the social order, international solidarity or the socialist State, through oral or written propaganda or in any other way, incurs a penalty of deprivation of liberty from one to eight years; make, distribute or possess propaganda of the nature mentioned in the preceding paragraph. Whoever spreads false news or malicious predictions tending to cause alarm or discontent in the population, or public disorder, incurs a penalty of deprivation of liberty from one to four years.
Almenares González also denounces that the Combinado del Este authorities have blamed him, in addition to protests and proclamations, with which they justify the “continued nature” of the alleged crime.
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