Havana Cuba. – “This Wednesday I was attacked and arrested by the Cuban State Security. Threats to send me to prison rained down; They want me to leave Cuba now,” denounced the journalist from CubaNet Vladimir Turró Páez, after being arrested outside the Comodoro Hotel, in the Playa municipality.
Turró Paéz explained that he was in the queue at the Hotel Comodoro market to buy yogurt for his 10-month-old son, when one of those in charge of organizing the queue attacked and offended him for no reason.
“That man first asked me if I was angry and automatically began to offend me and tell me that I was a clown. Then he went upstairs to hit me, but the people in the queue wouldn’t let him. At that time I did not understand what had happened, but when I left the market I understood that it was a setup by State Security,” explained the reporter.
When he left the store, he says, two political police officers were waiting for him who arrested him and took him to the Zapata y C police station, where they interrogated him.
“They went straight to the point. They told me about a phone call I had received in the morning from the opponent Lucinda Gonzalez Gomez, who asked me to cover a protest he intended to make at the CIMEQ (Center for Surgical Medical Research) to demand medical assistance for his aunt. The whole questioning revolved around that call.”
“The threats of imprisonment were not lacking either. They assured me that if I didn’t leave Cuba it could end badly. All the time they tried to make me look like a violent person, which is not true, and that is why they fabricated the store’s provocation,” the journalist warned.
According to the interviewee, the officers held him there for a period of two and a half hours, until he was released without charge.
“State Security is doing everything possible to finish our work. It is not the first time they have done it; They have already tried everything with me. I think they are preparing the ground to take me out of circulation,” the reporter denounced.
Last May, Turró Paéz and his colleague Enrique Díaz Rodríguez were threatened by the political police with being sent to prison if they did not leave the Island.
In November 2021, Turró Páez also was hit by three alleged State Security collaborators, who assured him that it was a preview of what they would do against him if he covered the march called by the Archipelago platform for November 15, 2021.
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