The independent reporter Iliana Hernández, contributor to CiberCuba, was released on Thursday night after spending several hours in police custody. The activist was arrested at noon in Cojimar, a neighborhood east of Havana, when she was a few blocks from her home, family sources told 14ymedio.
“I called the Cojímar unit but they told me that she had only been there for half an hour because State Security officials had transferred her to another place,” Hernández’s mother, Maricelis Cardosa, informed this newspaper after learning of the arrest.
The reporter was detained on a patrol by police officers as she was walking home from a visit to one of her neighbors. “There were two patrol cars, they were waiting for her, she had not realized it but the agents were there when she turned the corner,” added Cardosa.
“She tells me, Mom, I’m going to visit my friend and she arrived safely but at the exit they intercepted her. My daughter does not tell lies or has committed any crime. They took her a block and a half from here, they took her because she gave them The win, to intimidate the people and that no one comes out on November 15, “he denounced.
“There were two patrol cars, they were waiting for her, she hadn’t realized it but the agents were there when she turned around, watching the corner.”
Hernández, who in addition to Cuban nationality has Spanish, is also “regulated” by the authorities, with a travel ban that prevents him from leaving the country. She was one of the strikers who held a protest at the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement last November and since then has lived under constant harassment from State Security that closely monitors her home with police operations to prevent her from going out on the street.
In recent days, Hernández was able to leave her house two or three times, but episodes such as this afternoon show that the surveillance on her continues. The reporter has also had her telephone line and mobile data service cut off for long periods of time without ever receiving a response from the telecommunications monopoly Etecsa.
The director for the Americas of Amnesty International, Erika Guevara, denounced Hernández’s arrest as an “arbitrary detention.” For her part, the activist Thais Mailén Franco, who was imprisoned for almost five months after her participation in the Obispo street demonstration, wrote on her networks: “return Iliana Hernández to the people.”
The arrest was also reported by the activist Saily Gonzalez, who wrote: “Iliana Hernández has been kidnapped a few minutes ago. But Iliana is not alone. We are all very aware and already reporting, increasingly sure that these atrocities cannot continue to happen in #Cuba.”
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