MADRID, Spain.- Cuban opponent Ismael Boris Reñí, husband of political prisoner Aymara Nieto, was arrested this week by State Security when he was leaving his home.
I reñí denounced through social networks who was arrested together with Sandalio Mejías Zulueta —recently released on parole— by a patrolman and eight security agents who transported them to a police station in Calabazar, Boyeros municipality, Havana.
“They already left me Sandalio for an unknown place. They released me at 8:43. I denounce the threats by the political police and that no one can come to my house and —they told me— that they were going to accuse me of sedition and that I had to find a way to leave —from Cuba—, that my days were numbered”, explained the activist and member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU).
Speaking to Radio Television Martí Ismael Boris Reñí reported that the authorities seized 17,000 Cuban pesos that belonged to Sandalio Mejías.
“The first thing they asked me at the office is ‘where is the money’, and when they find the money, they tell me that they knew that Sandalio was coming to get the money and they began to threaten me: ‘we are going to accuse you of sedition.’ They were sitting there, in the office, until their boss came, a certain Rodríguez, with the same threats, ”he explained.
Subsequently, they discharged him and summoned him for this Friday at the Santiago de las Vegas police station, in the Boyeros municipality.
Ismael Boris Reñí, an open opponent of the regime, is constantly harassed by the Cuban government. His wife Aimara Nieto, a member of the Ladies in White, was imprisoned in 2018 and sentenced a year later to four years in prison for the alleged crimes of damage and attack.
In February 2022, the regime developed, in the Provincial People’s Court of Havana, a new trial, for which she was sentenced to five more years. On that occasion, he was accused of committing “disorders in prisons or re-education centers” for allegedly leading a revolt that took place on March 9, 2020 in the Western Women’s Penitentiary Center, known as “El Guatao”, where she was in custody at the time.
In March of this year, the International Institute on Race, Equality and Human Rights (Race and Equality) and productions La Tiorba presented the documentary film two homelands, a film that denounces and reflects on the human rights violations registered in Cuba.
The documentary addresses the experiences of Aymara Nieto, as well as those of fellow activists Eduardo Cardet and Xiomara Cruz.
