Havana/Serguey Marrero Faure, a common prisoner who was serving a sentence in the Guantánamo Provincial Prison, died on October 11 after presenting a health condition that was not adequately treated. The Cubalex legal advice center reported this Tuesday that with this case there are 35 inmates who have died in State custody so far this year.
According to information received by the organization, Marrero Faure went to the prison medical center with pain in his leg and was diagnosed with a blood clot, but did not receive treatment. “Shortly after, he lost his life,” he said.
The prisoner’s family reported that they had visited him days before and assured that he was fine, which is why they have demanded that the authorities provide answers about the death. However, so far, Cubalex noted, no official details have been offered about the circumstances of his death.
The prisoner’s family reported that they had visited him days before and assured that he was fine.
The center stressed that prison authorities “are obliged to guarantee timely and adequate medical care, and to immediately and independently investigate each death that occurs in custody.”
The organization stressed that these cases “reveal negligence, lack of medical care, violence and absence of independent investigations, a reflection of the inhumane conditions in Cuban prisons.”
The previous case reported by Cubalex regarding the death of a prisoner in custody of the authorities had been on October 1. Leudis Ramos Mejías, a 31-year-old common prisoner who was serving his sentence in the Boniato prison, Santiago de Cuba, committed suicide the day before. The man, born in Holguín, was found hanged in his cell.
Regarding Ramos Mejías, he reported that “he had been in a state of depression for several days due to a debt inside the prison. He feared reprisals from the paramilitaries that control the detachment and asked to be transferred, but his request was ignored.”
Regarding Ramos Mejías, he reported that “he had been in a state of depression for several days due to a debt inside the prison.”
After the revelation of the case, Cubalex announced days later that the authorities of the Boniato prison – one of the prisons with the most reports of deaths of prisoners so far this year and who is in quarantine due to a tuberculosis outbreak that affects more than 400 inmates – had threatened the inmates “to cover up their responsibility” for the suicide of Ramos Mejías.
In his report, he said that Major Humberto Garcés Tassé, head of Internal Order at that prison, “beat the inmate Ángel Romero to force him to falsely confess to being responsible for the death.”
He also indicated that the same officer threatened the political prisoner Eider Frómeta Allen, a member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), for publicly denouncing the case, telling him that “he was going to remember him for life,” that he “would never get out” of prison and that he would fabricate a cause to keep him imprisoned.
According to the Cuban Prisons Documentation Center, at least 111 deaths in custody are recorded in Cuba, from January 2023 to September 30 (the case of Serguey Marrero Faure is not yet in the registry). Of them, six were political prisoners (Yan Carlos González, Yasmany González, Yoleisy Oviedo, Manuel de Jesús Guillén, Geraldo Díaz Alonso and Luis Barrios).
