The activist Yasmany González Valdés was transferred this Friday to the Combinado del Este prison, in Havana, after more than a month in Villa Marista, the headquarters of State Security, as confirmed to 14ymedio his wife, Ilsa Ramos.
Ramos, who will be able to visit her husband next Wednesday, tells this newspaper that she has not yet been informed of the date on which the trial will take place. González is being accused of the alleged crime of “propaganda against government bodies.”
During his stay at Villa Marista, the activist felt “like a caged lion” in “a cell without ventilation,” Ramos denounced in a post on his Facebook account. “I could not hold back the tears when I saw his physical state deteriorated, but even more so his mental state, he is super upset, very badly with his nerves.”
The activist, also known as Libre Libre, was arrested on April 20 after a “violent search” at his home in Central Havana in which some 15 agents of the political police participated, who confiscated a mechanic’s overalls, a brush and your mobile phone, as part of the investigation into the guinea fowl who appeared in various central points of the capital against the Cuban regime.
González is being accused of the alleged crime of “propaganda against government organs”
Initially, the Observatory for Cultural Rights (ODC) alerted about the arrest of Libre Libre and recalled that the activist had been 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 calling itself 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 the walls of the Faculty of Physics of the University of Havana. The second, in the Aguirre park, and a third was placed at the entrance to the university stadium, on Ronda street. But it was the fourth and most recent poster that bothered State Security the most, when it appeared on the morning of April 20 at number 7 Humboldt Street, in Central 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 poster, made 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 denounced the harassment she has suffered from 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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