Madrid/Luis Robles Elizastiguithe “young man with the banner,” arrived in Madrid this Monday from Cuba, along with his mother, Yindra Elizastigui, and her seven-year-old son. Excited and tired, they did not want to make any statement upon their arrival at the Adolfo Suárez Airport in Madrid, which they witnessed 14ymedio.
The 32-year-old from Havana, considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, was one of the released last January during the mass releases of prisoners as part of an agreement with the Joe Biden Government. At that time, he had not yet finished serving house arrest – he would do so last June – as part of his five-year prison sentence for holding a sign calling for the freedom of rapper Denis Solís on the central San Rafael boulevard in Havana on December 4, 2020.
Arrested that same day, the images of his solitary demonstration, spread on social networks, were immortalized, two months later, in the video clip of Homeland and Life. They were, at the same time, the only incriminating evidence presented by the Prosecutor’s Office at the trial, held almost a year later. in Marianaoin which he was prosecuted for resistance and enemy propaganda, despite the fact that the video showed that he did not struggle with the agents who detained him nor was there any allusion to an enemy on his sign, and that the passers-by who surrounded him tried to defend him from the Police.
The banner read “Freedom, no more repression, #FreeDenis”, in reference to the rapper Denis Solís, who was then sentenced to eight months in prison in a summary trial and who would end up exiled via Serbia.
The three judges and the prosecutor who participated in it were sanctioned last May by the United States for their “crucial role” in the arbitrary detention.
According to the judgmentto which he had access 14ymedioin the trial it was “proven” that Robles “responded to a summons” from the influencer Cuban “Alexander Otaola to speak out” against the arrest of Solís, “of the police authorities, of the leaders of the State and the Government”, and of “carrying out any act aimed at destabilizing the internal order, demonstrating publicly in the streets against the Cuban economic and social system.”
The phrase that was read on the sign that Robles was carrying “was opposed to the decisions of the authorities” that determined the arrest of Solís, justified the Provincial Court of Havana, where the activist was judicially prosecuted.
The sentence was dated March 28, 2022, almost four months after the trial, and the three judges and the prosecutor who participated in it were sanctioned last May by the United States for his “crucial role” in the arbitrary detention of Robles, an action that Washington considered a “serious violation of human rights.”
Since then, the four officials – Gladys María Padrón Canals, María Elena Fornari Conde, Juan Sosa Orama and Yanaisa Matos Legrá – and their families have been prohibited from entering US territory.
While he was imprisoned in the Combinado del Este maximum security prison, the regime was cruel to Robles’ family and even arrest one of his brothersLester Fernández, while building a boat, on whom they imposed a fine of 7,000 pesos accusing him of “illegal departure from the country”, although there was no evidence of this, as his mother reported at that time, in early 2023.
Yindra Elizastigui, for her part, has been one of the most combative mothers for the cause of political prisoners, not just her son. Throughout his years in prison, he never tired of denouncing the mistreatment that Robles received in jail. “We must continue defending the innocent, because our children and our relatives are innocent. What they did, they did for a right that all human beings have,” he declared in a direct broadcast in May of last year, when he they denied their sononce again, the conditional release to which he was entitled.
Graduated in Computer Science, we began to know more about Luis Robles thanks to his brother, Landy Fernández Elizastiguiwhich became one of the communication channels of the “young man with the banner” with the outside world. In an interview granted to 14ymedioFernández said that his brother “has always thought differently about the regime.”
In fact, three days before taking to the streets to demonstrate peacefully, Robles He recorded a video that was published much later and where he spoke about his thoughts, desires and also the reasons that led him to be a protester.
“We sincerely wish for a change, a change in the system, a change in the country, because communism has really turned this country into a true hell”
“We sincerely wish for a change, a change in the system, a change in the country, because communism has really turned this country into a true hell, a hell where it is practically impossible to breathe, not only breathe air, but breathe peace, breathe tranquility,” he stated in the material.
At another time, he said that “freedom is the greatest thing one can have in life and these shameless communists since they arrived have cut off all kinds of freedoms from us, freedoms to a free religion, freedoms to a free ideology, freedoms to choose whoever you want, not whoever they impose on you.” And he continued: “They have even taken away our freedom to think, they want to control even what we think.”
In March 2022, the 29-year-old published a letter in which he reiterated his fight and his objective: “freedom for the people of Cuba.” In the letter, Robles returned to the reasons that led him to carry out the peaceful protest that led to prison.
“I decided to break the silence because I got tired of seeing how my country is destroyed and the Government does nothing to fix it,” he explained, “because I think that the biggest enemy that Cuba has is not outside but sitting in the presidential chair.”
