Havana Cuba. – From the penitentiary center of maximum provincial rigor of Guantanamothe inmate Eloiky Matos Matos denounces several officials of that facility for denying him an extra-penal license and preventing him from receiving medical attention.
Eloiky Matos Matos is 38 years old. According to what he indicated by telephone from prison, at the time of his incarceration he worked in the private sector as the owner of a stall selling tamales. He also points out that he suffers from dilated cardiomyopathy, ischemic heart disease, syncope, ventricular arrhythmias, diabetes and colitis; and denounces the head of the prison, Lieutenant Colonel Marcelino Bueno Taveras; Lieutenant Colonel Georvis Cajigal Cantillo, head of the Guantanamo Provincial Directorate of Jails and Prisons; the head of the medical post, First Lieutenant Vicente; to the second head of Reeducation, First Lieutenant Bella, and to other officials of the penitentiary system, since he affirms that they deny him access to health care, as well as the granting of an extrapenal license.
The prisoner describes that on July 4, 2020, he was arrested in the middle of a family fight. Law enforcement officers showed up for the arrest without transportation and he refused to walk the three kilometers to the Las Tunas Police station because he had a pacemaker. The response of the uniformed men was to beat him up when he arrived at the station. Due to his blows, the area where the pacemaker was was inflamed.
Matos Matos goes on to say that a doctor examined him at the scene, who sent him to the Puerto Padre hospital, where he was admitted to the psychiatric ward. When he got worse, he was examined by a cardiologist, who diagnosed him as seriously ill with endocarditis and referred him in turn to the Las Tunas hospital.
The man denounces that despite the fact that his condition was serious, he was tried at the hospital by videoconference. He was sentenced to 14 years in prison for the alleged crime of attack, without a lawyer, without a prosecutor’s request and without notifying his relatives.
After the trial, he was transferred, handcuffed by the feet, to the convict room of the Saturnino Lora Provincial Hospital. There he stayed for a year and seven months and they put another pacemaker. He was later transferred to the Boniato prison hospital.
About a year later he presented another endocarditis, for which he was transferred again to the Saturnino Lora hospital, where he remained for four months. There, the pacemaker was removed. He was later released and transferred to the Guantánamo prison infirmary. During that last admission to the Saturnino Lora, the head of Cardiology at the hospital pointed out that his health situation was not compatible with prison. However, his case has been presented to Forensic Medicine on three occasions, and all three times he has been denied extrapenal leave.
Despite the fact that the military have threatened to lock him up in the torture room of the Guantanamo prison, known as the “psychiatry room”, if he denounces his situation, Eloiky Matos announced his intention to declare a hunger strike starting this October 24 in demand for medical attention, since the consultation is in Santiago de Cuba and the officials refuse to take him. They have also deceived him by assuring him that the documents of his case were sent to the Court, he emphasized.
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