11J protester victim of incommunicado detention and forced disappearance

HAVANA, Cuba.- E; young Cuban Oscar Castro Moncada is detained andn the Valle Grande maximum rigor prison, located in the municipality of La Lisa, west of the capital, in retaliation for having participated in the demonstration on July 11, 2021.

Castro Moncada is 24 years old and lives in Punta Brava, in that municipality. His mother, Olga Lidia Moncada, told CubaNet how on July 12 police captain Aramís Verdecia came to his home to arrest him, and since the protester was not present, the officer threatened to “beat him to death, smash him and Throw him dead in the doorway.”

Because of how disturbed and alarmed his mother was after receiving these threats, Oscar Castro showed up the next day at the San Agustín police unit accompanied by his older brothers.

Olga Lidia said that when the brothers left the unit, the policemen beat Oscar. She also describes that the young man spent four days in that unit. On the fifth day, his mother brought him toilet and shorts, but the agents did not accept them.

During that visit to Olga Lidia, she was not informed that her son was no longer there. She was a person who, discreetly asking about the young man’s physical appearance, confirmed that he had been taken away in a vehicle from Villa Marista.

This Cuban mother, who claims to be the niece of the mambí hero José Guillermo (“Guillermón”) Moncada, assured that in Villa Marista they did not attend her that day alleging that it was Friday, for which they ordered her to return on Monday.

According to what Olga Lidia told CubaNet, on Monday they did not receive the toilet either, and they told her to bring it on Wednesday. She, too, was not seen on the agreed day and they denied her seeing her son under the pretext that he was being held incommunicado.

A week passed and Moncada could not see his son, the officers even told him that Oscar was no longer there. At that point, Olga Lidia emphasized that she would not allow her son to be disappeared or killed as they had done with other protesters. However, she did not get a response from the repressors.

Through the mother of another protester, Olga Lidia learned that Oscar was in the 5th police unit, located at 62 between 7th A and 7th B, in the Playa municipality. However, when he went to that unit, they did not allow him to see him either, since they also held him incommunicado. Only after reiterating his intention to report the disappearance of the young man was he put on the phone.

Oscar Castro’s mother assures that the young man spent approximately three months in that police station. There he contracted COVID-19 and some skin boils. Later they transferred him to Jovenes de Occidente where he spent another three months. At the end of that period, they took him to the Valle Grande prison. Olga Lidia emphasizes that during all that time she could only talk to her son by phone. She was not allowed to see him until November 2021.

Oscar Castro Moncada is a graduate of Food Processing and at the time of his arrest he earned a living as a sausage manufacturer on his own. The Prosecutor’s Office demanded for him 10 years of deprivation of liberty under accusations of attack, contempt and public disorder. The sentence received was six years in prison.

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