Although he was released this Monday, Cuza reported that he remains under investigation and this Tuesday he must appear before the police for a fabricated cause.
MADRID, Spain.- The independent journalist Ángel Cuza Alfonso was released this Monday from the Guanajay prison, in the province of Artemisa, although he remains under criminal proceedings and subject to police control, as he himself reported in an audio sent to the editorial office of CubaNet.
“They released me yesterday (Monday) from the Guanajay prison, but supposedly I have an open process for the ‘crime’ of carrying explosives due to a bullet casing,” Cuza explained. According to his testimony, State Security agents informed him that he must appear this Tuesday at one in the afternoon at the police unit on Third and 110, in the Playa municipality, Havana, to sign a document as part of the judicial procedure against him.
“Yesterday the repressors told me that I have to appear today, Tuesday at one in the afternoon at the Third and 110 unit in Playa, as proof that I have to sign a form until the day of the trial or I don’t know, I have to see what the process is going to be like,” he added, given the ambiguity of the situation. Cuza denounced that not even 24 hours have passed since his release, and they have already “started to repress.”
Likewise, he reported that they threatened him that “if he does anything, they will send him to Matanzas as a prisoner.”
The release comes a couple of months after the journalist was transferred to Guanajay prison under the argument of a supposed “jilted list,” a measure that organizations and activists have denounced as part of the harassment practices against political prisoners and opponents in Cuba. From that penitentiary center, Cuza sent a letter in which he denounced conditions of confinement and treatment that he considered inhumane, and in which he stated: “I prefer death to remaining in prison.”
Ángel Cuza has been arrested and prosecuted on several occasions for his work as an independent communicator and for his activism. His most recent imprisonment and subsequent transfer to Guanajay were part of an escalation of pressure that included interrogations, threats and the opening of new criminal cases, now reactivated with the accusation of “carrying explosives” for possessing a bullet casing, a charge that the journalist himself considers fabricated.
