“He is very emaciated and they continue to question him,” he tells 14ymedio Ilsa Ramos, wife of activist Yasmany González Valdés, who has been detained for three weeks at the State Security headquarters in Havana, Villa Marista. “I ask and ask the officers about his case, but they don’t give me any information,” laments the woman.
Ramos was able to visit her husband this Thursday to bring him some cleaning products. “They have not told us if or when he will finally be brought to trial. It seems that he will remain in Villa Marista for the moment,” warns the wife, who reiterates that González is being investigated for the alleged crime of “propaganda against government bodies.” .
The activist, also known as free free, was arrested on april 20 after a “violent search” at his home in Centro Habana. Some 15 political police agents participated in the search, who confiscated a mechanic’s overalls, a brush and his mobile phone, as part of the investigation into the graffiti that appeared in various central points of the capital against the Cuban regime.
“I pray to God that you will be free soon, as well as all our political prisoners,” Ramos wrote on her Facebook account, where she also recounts the vicissitudes she has had to overcome after her husband’s arrest, especially since the couple has an autistic son who he needs care and that he is very attached to González. The woman denounces pressure from the political police and having been “also interrogated.”
“They have not told us if or when he will finally be brought to trial. It seems that he will remain in Villa Marista for the moment”
Initially, the Observatory for Cultural Rights (ODC) alerted about the arrest of Libre Libre and recalled that the activist was summoned by the Police at the beginning of April at the Zanja station, in the Cuban capital, where they linked him to the group that calls The New Directory (END). According to González’s testimony, on that occasion they did graphological tests on him and also tried to detain him for non-payment of fines that had already been paid.
The first graffiti signed by END and with the slogan “No to the PCC” appeared on March 20 on the walls of the Faculty of Physics of the University of Havana. The second in the aguirre parkon March 23, and a third, from April 17, was placed at the entrance of the university stadium, on round street. But it was the fourth and most recent poster that would have bothered State Security the most, appearing on the morning of April 20 in the 7 Humboldt Streetin Center Havana.
The location of this last sign coincides with the place where four young men belonging to the Revolutionary Directorate were assassinated in 1957, during the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista. The graffiti, carried out on the same day as the anniversary of that repressive action, generated a strong police operation to cover the letters with paint, in addition to an “act of reparation”.
Yasmany González has repeatedly denounced the harassment that has suffered by State Security. In 2022, after four days detained in Villa Marista, the activist, who works as a self-employed bricklayer, said that he would stop posting on social networks. He had previously been fined for denouncing human rights violations and demanding the release of those detained in the protests on July 11, 2021.
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