This Thursday, it transcended the content of a phone call and a letter sent by the reporter from the Eastern team.
Miami, United States. – The Cuban reporter and activist Ángel Cuza Alfonso, arrested since the end of July in the Maximum Combined Safety Criminal of the East, denounced from prison that the Cuban authorities have manufactured charges against them based on false evidence, on a new episode of what human rights defenders qualify as “political instrumentalization of the criminal system.”
In a phone call from building 1 of the east combined – whose recording was sent to Cubanet –Cuza said: “I am making a complaint because they say that fire and explosives were occupied, but at no time there was an occupation of weapons, only [la de] A 38 caliber bullet, and I had that for religious purposes. ”
According to his testimony, the projectile had been in possession for more than 17 years and had no criminal purpose.
Cuza also claimed to have been a victim of procedural irregularities. “With me they committed several frauds,” he said, in reference to possible manipulations in the transfer or detention documents.
In a handwritten letter sent from prison and addressed to all his “brothers and sisters of struggle”, the activist reaffirmed his determination to continue his political activism: “Know that my body and my soul, even if it is locked up, will always be in every protest they do.”
In the same text, Cuza asked not to leave him alone and warned that he is willing to reach the last consequences for his cause: “I am willing to stop ingesting food,” he wrote.
The case of Ángel Cuza Alfonso has generated concern among human rights defenders. The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH), based in Madrid, described his arrest as arbitrary and without legal basis. In an official statement, the agency said: “The mere possession of an inert object, without a context of threat or use, cannot be criminalized.”
The accusation is based on the possession of an empty hob found in the activist’s wallet, an object that he confirmed to Cubanet Ana Castillo, mother of Cuza’s daughter, was an old amulet that even the police “had seen before.” Castillo also denounced the difficulties in achieving legal representation due to the political nature of the case.
The OCDH warned that Cuza’s criminal processing violates the principle of typicity of Cuban criminal law, by applying an extensive and arbitrary interpretation of the Criminal Code (Law No. 151/2022). “Every crime must be clear and taxatively defined by law,” said the agency, which also considered that “this action is nothing more than an arbitrary measure, clearly oriented to intimidate and neutralize its peaceful activism.”
Cuza Alfonso has been subject to systematic harassment by the regime. In November 2023 he was sentenced to one year and six months in prison for “public disorder”, and released in May this year. In 2021 he had already turned eight months in jail for participating in a peaceful protest on Bishop Street, in support of the San Isidro movement and the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara.
OCDH considers that the current criminal process against Cuza “constitutes a flagrant violation of its human rights and a worrying example of the political instrumentalization of the criminal system in Cuba.”
The imprisonment of Cuza is inscribed in a broader context of repression against dissent on the island. According to OCDH, it is “a systematic pattern” that criminalizes dissent and restricts the civic space.
So far, Cuza remains in a provisional prison regime in a maximum security cell of the east combined, without formally announced the date of a trial. In his letter from prison, he made it clear that he will not give up his activism: “Never claudicate[é] about the struggle for the freedom of all our political prisoners. ”
