(EFE).- Cuban opponent Guillermo Fariñas, arrested last Friday, July 8 in Santa Clarawas released this Tuesday, his mother, Alicia Hernández, confirmed to Efe.
Fariñas, 60, was arrested on the eve of the first anniversary of the 11J anti-government demonstrations and was returned to his home yesterday afternoon by the police authorities. At that time there was no one in the house, her mother told Efe, precisely because she had gone to visit her son.
His daughter Haisa Fariñas wrote on Twitter: “He has already been released after spending more than 73 hours in isolation” and “soon he will make his statements about what happened.”
On Friday, July 8, Haisa Fariñas said, patrol number 266 of the political police was watching her father’s house and, almost an hour later, she indicated that the agents of the aforementioned unit were joined by those of patrol 250 to carry out the detention. “He was arrested in his own home,” she noted. “His whereabouts are unknown, they did not want to give details of the reason for the arrest and where they transferred him.”
The family described Fariñas’ arrest as “kidnapping”, although they later had contact with the dissident. “They only allowed my grandmother to enter this unit so she could see him and bring him his medicine, food and toilet,” her sister said.
“He was already released after being isolated for more than 73 hours” and “he will soon make his statements about what happened”
At the beginning of this month, Fariñas published an investigation carried out together with Mabel Hernández White, and the former Ladies in White Dayamí Villavicencio Hernández and Yaima Villavicencio Hernández, about police violence against Zinadine Zidan Batista Álvarez in the El Condado district of Santa Clara. The 17-year-old teenager, killed at the hands of the Police, the opposition revealed, participated in the protests on July 11, 2021 and after spending 23 days in detention, he was released and fined 3,000 pesos.
The previous arrest of Fariñas, 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Conscience of the European Parliament, was on May 20, when he left his home to place a bouquet of flowers before a bust of the Cuban independence hero José Martí, on the anniversary of his death, in a park in Santa Clara. At that time he was taken to a police unit where he remained for almost ten hours and was interrogated by State Security agents, according to the leader of the United Anti-Totalitarian Front (Fantu).
Ten days earlier, he also denounced an arrest as a result of his return to Havana, after a two-month tour that had taken him through the United States and Europe, where he met with different political representatives and activists to talk about the situation in Cuba.
Fariñas is also known for the many hunger strikes he has held since the first one in 1995. The longest dates from 2003, when he fasted for 14 months, and the 25th took place in 2016 and lasted 54 days. to ask the government to end the repression against dissidents.
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