Havana/The rapper Fernando Almenares Rivera, known as Nando OBDC, was finally sentenced to five years in prison for the “intentional and consummated crime of propaganda against the constitutional order, as a direct author.” This is stated in the sentence that has just been delivered to his mother, Eva Rivera, and to which he has had access 14ymedio.
Signed in Havana on December 22 by judges of the Crimes against State Security Chamber Kenia Reyes Lara –the speaker–, Jesús Pérez Benavides, Patricia González Vera, Gil Amado Payne Hernández and Simón Mario Reyes Balmaceda, the sentence reduces the prison prosecutor request –which was six–, but it preserves the same Orwellian tone in the story of the “proven facts.”
Thus, it is true that Almenares received “indications” from the Cuban-American Armando Labrador Coro, “active member and president of the counterrevolutionary organization called Cuba Primero” – to which Daniel Alfaro Frías, José Antonio Pompa López and Lázaro Mendoza García belong, to whom they sentenced to nine, eight and five years in prison, respectively. last october–, with which “it maintains relationships and contacts through its members, on an unspecified date but prior to and close to the month of August 2024.”
The ratification that he was the author borders, in the legal document, on handwriting
That organization was, for the magistrates of the Popular Court, the one that instigated the rapper to paint “phrases with counterrevolutionary content on fragments of white cloth and place them in places where they could be seen by passers-by, with the purpose of provoking social disorders, altering citizen tranquility and creating discontent in the population and in this way stimulating actions against the social order established in the country.” For this, the sentence says, they paid Nando OBDC $200.
The phrases, painted “with a pink substance” were “Cuba First in the streets for human rights”, “we want changes now Cuba First” and “Cuba First in the streets”. The confirmation that he was the author borders, in the legal document, on handwriting. According to the “documentology criminalistic expert opinion,” the sentence says, as in that Marx Brothers comic scene“it is concluded that the handwritten texts were made by the accused as there was a coincidence in the degree of elaboration, inclination to the left, the form of the mixed movements and in particular the ascending and descending disproportion of the lower strokes of the capital letter A, the location of the middle stroke with respect to the baseline of writing the capital letter A, the situation of the middle stroke of the capital letter B with respect to the baseline of writing, the inclination towards right in ascending shape of the semi-oval of the capital letter P, the upper straight stroke of the capital letter R as well as the arched shape located in the final stroke of the capital letter R.”
However, although the judges affirm that “it was verified” that Almenares was at the Bar Feline event on the date the event supposedly occurred, the owners of the premises and the organizers, the same text reads, “do not remember him in the place because many people participated.” The court assessed this as “not relevant”, because, they explain convolutedly, “during the oral trial, as per his right, he stated that he was on a boat on that date, which demonstrates his intention to evade justice.”
“They were also wrong about all the information, his age, the name of his parents.”
Almenares’ mother is especially bothered by this last issue, although she assures that “everything the document says is a lie.” And she continues, disgusted: “They also got all the information wrong, his age, the name of his parents.”
Among the evidence evaluated by the judges was the registration of the young man’s cell phone, through which “his link with the Cuban-American counterrevolutionary Armando Labrador Coro could be determined”, and the testimony of “witness Roberto Manuel Escalona, who referred in the oral trial that he brought money from abroad to the accused without knowing the senders of the same, but that the last time he gave him the sum of 200 USD, a figure that coincidentally is the same as that promised by Armando Labrador to the accused if he carried out the acts for which he is being tried.”
Likewise, the sentence links Almenares with “different counterrevolutionary groups” such as the independent media Radio Martí or Diario de Cuba, as well as with the Cuban Youth Dialogue Table, Cubalex and the Cuban Democratic Directorate.
Another issue considered by the court is that they did not find a “recognized employment relationship” and that “he maintains unfavorable social conduct by associating himself with criminal elements in the locality and with elements disaffected with the revolutionary process based both in Cuba and abroad,” although they exempt him from a criminal record.
The court condemns him for painting on those sheets, based on the ironclad Constitution, “taking into account the degree of social harm of the act committed by the accused.”
In any case, the court condemns him for painting on those sheets, based on the ironclad Constitution, “taking into account the degree of social harm of the act committed by the accused, due to the consequences that it would bring to the economic and social stability of the country and the peace of the members of society, by putting posters on public roads with a clear message that the residents oppose the Cuban social process and take to the streets, which would cause protests, violence and a rupture of the natural state of tranquility and citizen security that characterizes our country.”
The actions of Almenares Riveras, they continue, “are in total opposition to what is established in article 1 of the Supreme Law which establishes ‘Cuba is a socialist State with social justice, democratic, independent and sovereign, organized with everyone and for the good of all as a unitary and indivisible republic, founded on the work, dignity, humanism and ethics of its citizens for the enjoyment of freedom, equity, equality, solidarity, well-being and individual and prosperity. collective’”.
The sentence does not indicate in which prison he will serve the sentence, but until now the rapper was in the Cuba Panama prison, located in Güines, Mayabeque, intended for HIV/AIDS patients. his mother has publicly denounced that they keep him confined in that place, when he does not have this condition, as well as the painful health conditions that that prison has.
At the end of July, Nando OBDC was on hunger striketo protest having been held incommunicado in prison. The musician’s activism had already been in the sights of the authorities for some time. In November 2021, he was summoned to the Seventh Unit of the National Revolutionary Police for his publications on social networks.
