The Popular Municipal Court of Matanzas informed the Cuban academic and dissident Alina Bárbara López of the undated suspension of the trial against her scheduled for this Friday and in which she faced a maximum sentence of four years of correctional work.
Just a few hours before the hearing, the court sent an order to the historian and editor of an independent media explaining that “the act of oral trial indicated in this case is annulled, until a new appointment date.”
In statements to EFELópez has denied “all” the accusations against him. The prosecution charged him with the alleged crimes of disobedience, contempt and attack during his last arrest, in June 2024.
“I was hit, I was mistreated, I was dragged down a ditch,…” stated López, who assures that she has been left with permanent consequences (dizziness, pain) from those events. She considers that the violence used against her was “premeditated” and that the aim was to neutralize her physically or psychologically.
Regarding the ruling of this second trial against her in just two years, the dissident is clear: “If you go to trial for this type of reason, which is political, you will be convicted. They will never exonerate you.”
The prosecutor’s request, he added, has changed from four years in prison to correctional work without confinement for the same period. “They hope to get out of the trial with the least political cost for themselves,” he argued.
However, López announced that he did not plan to “accept, under any conditions, doing correctional work,” because in his opinion this trial is “an illegitimate cause, a judicial farce.”
The events occurred on June 18, 2024, when López and fellow academic and dissident Jenny Pantoja (from whom they are asking for three years of correctional work) were traveling in a taxi from Matanzas to Havana with the aim of participating in an act of protest.
The police stopped the vehicle and told them that they had to get out and get into a patrol car to be taken to a police station in Matanzas.
According to López’s story, she asked about the legality of the arrest and its reasons, to which a police officer responded with multiple acts of violence. The prosecution, for its part, affirms that it was López who struggled and insulted the agents and that the physical damage alleged by both “was not real.”
More than 220 writers and artists signed an open letter in which they denounced the “police violence” with which López and Pantoja were treated. Among the signatories were the Cuban writer Leonardo Padura, the Argentine musician and singer-songwriter Fito Páez and the Cuban film director Fernando Pérez.
López has been arrested several times in recent years for carrying out symbolic protests and as a result of these actions she was sentenced at the end of 2023 to pay a fine for a crime of disobedience, which she refused.
