“This starts now.” With that phrase and a laugh, the rapper Maykel Castillo responded osorb when they told him in jail this Thursday the ten year tax petition of prison he faces, according to what he said this Friday Anamely Ramos.
The art curator details in a Facebook post all the charges against both Osorbo and the leader of the San Isidro Movement, Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who has a request from the public ministry for seven years in prison. The first is accused of attack, contempt and public disorder; the second, of outrage against national symbols, contempt and public disorder.
Ramos argues that “the search for alleged previous crimes to extend the time that they are asked for is evident,” recalling that the “outrage against national symbols” does not even correspond to April 4, 2021, when according to the legal file there were the facts for which they are accused, but two years ago, when Alcántara carried out the work Drapeau, with a Cuban flag.
In addition, he explains that it must be taken into account that the day before the date in question, on April 3, the police beat Osorbo “at the entrance of the Cuba y Chacón station, with several activists who accompanied him to look for Luis Manuel, who are witnesses and who were also beaten”. As a result, the rapper had to go to the polyclinic “when he was released at dawn.”
When they tried to arrest him on April 4 and handcuffed him, continues the activist, “they didn’t lock him up and Maykel began to complain about this and the discussion began.”
“What Maykel reacted against that day, what the neighborhood people who defended him reacted against, was against the police violence that is a fact in the Cuban streets and that was seen in all its crudeness on July 11”
Far from behaving violently, as stated in the prosecutor’s petition, in the video made public on social networks from that moment It can be seen that the violence “begins with the policeman grabbing Maykel by the neck while he kept his hands up or behind him practically all the time.”
“What Maykel reacted against that day, what the neighborhood people who defended him reacted against, was against the police violence that is a fact in the Cuban streets and that was seen in all its crudeness on July 11,” Ramos asserts. .
The activist also mentions that “when people began to spontaneously gather in San Isidro and sing,” that same April 4, “State Security arrived,” which, Ramos assures, “said that the police would be sanctioned for trying to stop arbitrarily and violently to Maykel, the same police officers who are accusing them today”.
Ramos recalls that in the year that both activists have been in prison, “many international organizations, personalities, governments and coalitions have demanded their release”: “When the court judges and sentences Maykel and Luis, it will not be doing so in the shadows, he will be doing it in front of the world and against the world”.
One of those organizations, Amnesty International (AI), also ruled this Friday on the tax request for Osorbo and Alcántara. Erika Guevara-Rosas, director of AI for the Americas, tweeted that both “conscientious opponents” face these sentences “for protesting, making anti-establishment art, denouncing the repression and authoritarianism of a government that despises its people.”
Guevara-Rosas attached to his message the document with the request of the Cuban Prosecutor’s Office, which among other “crimes”, also speaks of insulting the country’s president, accusing the Government, in a live broadcast, of “the lack of medical resources ” during the pandemic and insult the Ministry of the Interior and the security forces, among others.
The Public Ministry considers in the brief that its investigation has concluded and requests the Ordinary Criminal Section of the People’s Municipal Court of Central Havana to open the oral trial against the accused.
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