MADRID, Spain.- In mid-January, the relatives of Yoandi Montiel Hernández, the Cuban influencer known as El Gato de Cuba, submitted a request for parole benefits.
As explained to Radio Television Martí Lázaro Montiel, father of El Gato de Cuba, submitted the request because his sentence should end in April.
In addition, the very camp where Yoandi Montiel is being held suggested probation for good behavior.
Although there is little left for him to serve his sentence, “he has a lot of pressure in there, because whatever happens they can tell him that the sanction will be revoked,” said the father of the influencer.
El Gato de Cuba was sentenced to two years in prison for the alleged crime of contempt in a trial held on April 7, 2022. He had been arrested in April 2021 and taken to Villa Marista, the State Security headquarters on the island. Later, he was transferred to the Valle Grande prison. While in this prison, he went on a hunger strike to protest the abuses against the inmates.
After more than a year in Valle Grande, in October 2022 was transferred to the Toledo II camp for inmates, a labor prison near Wajay, in the Boyeros municipality.
In order for him to be transferred to an inmate camp, where he can work and even receive passes, El Gato de Cuba was promoted to a minimum severity regime, contemplated in the Regulations of the Cuban Penitentiary System; a benefit that has currently been denied to several political prisoners.
Prior to the transfer, his mother, María Hernández Álvarez, announced through a video posted on her social networks that Yoandi Montiel could have received parole since August 2022, but State Security blackmailed her son. with not allowing it until he made a video asking the Cubans not to go out and protest.
