HAVANA, Cuba – Cuban activist Adrian Curuneaux Stivensvice president of the Opposition Movement for a New Republic, was sentenced to seven years in prison for the events that occurred in May 2021, when he attempted to visit the artist and political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara (LMOA) at the “Calixto García” Clinical-Surgical Hospital.
The activist was arrested and charged with the crime of assault for attacking a police officer approximately four years ago.
In March 2021, Curuneaux Stivens was sentenced to one year of imprisonment subsidized by limitation of liberty for the same period of time, and while serving that sentence on provisional release, he was arrested two months later when he tried to visit LMOA.
On that occasion, he was detained in Valle Grande without being tried for one year and six months, from May 2021 to November 2022, when he was released; and On July 16, the trial corresponding to that case was held.
According to the sentence issued by the Municipal Popular Criminal Court of Centro Habana, it was agreed to sanction Curuneaux Stivens as “the perpetrator of two completed crimes of attack to three and four years of deprivation of liberty respectively, and as the direct perpetrator of a crime of contempt (…) to three years (…), and as a sole and joint sentence to seven years of deprivation of liberty.”
The document indicates that on May 4, 2021, Adrián went to the aforementioned health institution to visit Alcantara Hillwho was being held there after going on a hunger and thirst strike.
At the site, the workers “explained to him that, in accordance with the health protocol established to combat Covid-19, visits were prohibited.”
The opponent “ignored the request and began to get upset, at which point officers from the Ministry of the Interior who were there approached him and asked for his identification documents (…), he was also told to turn off the mobile phone he was carrying in his hand, where he was recording what was happening, and when he did not do so, it was seized from him,” the document details.
He also said that on the way to the police unit, Adrián said things like “Down with Fidel” and “Down with Raúl,” bit the thumb of one of the two officers sitting next to him in the patrol car on the right hand, and ripped off the button on the right epaulette of his uniform.
According to the sentencing report, Curuneaux Stivens “uttered offensive and derogatory remarks not only against the police but also against Army General Raúl Castro Ruz,” and initially attacked one of the two officers violently, “kicking him” and then biting the other officer’s finger.
The Court also wanted to “make it clear” that the MONR member was not being judged for “political thinking or repressing disagreement with the Cuban political system” and that “there are ways to legally express different points of view, criteria or disagreements with respect to a person, an authority or a political, economic, social or other situation.”
Curuneaux Stivens is currently serving a four-year prison sentence in Penitentiary 1580 for the crime of assault, so he will now have to serve a total sentence of 11 years in prison.
According to the legal information center Cubalex, “this sentence represents an escalation of repression against Curuneaux, with the aim of keeping him in prison for as long as possible due to his political activism and his work in defense of human rights.”
Likewise, Yurisán Valdes Pedraza, the opposition leader’s wife, said that what the regime is doing to Adrián is an injustice and demanded his freedom.
