The brothers Hillary and Frank Artola Plasencia, arrested on October 1 after a massive protest in El Vedado, HavanaThey were released this Sunday. Ibis Plasencia, mother of the young people, aged 26 and 18, respectively, announced the news in their social networks, without detailing their legal situation. Specifically, he published a video in which the parish priest of the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus from the same neighborhood, Lester Zayas, welcomed Frank upon his release.
“Because we have been here praying for you all the time,” Zayas can be heard saying in the images, who, after giving the boy a hug, knelt down, kissed both hands and then his head.
Ibis Plasencia thanked the priest himself, one of those who have raised their voices against the regime in recent years and who, precisely a few days ago, denounced a robbery suffered by his parish.
The brothers, also sons of the Cuban Television actor Frank Artola, have been imprisoned these five months accused of public disorder and resistancebut without being judged. Both, denounced very early on by their relatives, were mistreated by State Security agents At the time of their arrest, when they were returning home after a spontaneous demonstration that took place on Línea and F.
Both, their relatives denounced very early on, were mistreated by State Security agents at the time of their arrest.
Frank suffered, according to the testimony of Adrián Martínez Cádiz, “fractured septum, split lips and one of the swollen eyes due to the blows received.” They were not the only ones who suffered from the repression of the security forces that day. Justice 11J then published that “reports of people injured and brutally beaten in protest, and currently in detention, are alarming.”
That Saturday, the people of Havana had been suffering five days in a row power outagesafter collapse of the National Electric System after the passage of Hurricane Ian. hundreds of people they had taken to the streets ever sincebut it was on October 1 that the regime unleashed the repression with force, with a full deployment of police officers, State Security agents and military service recruits dressed in civilian clothes and armed with sticks.
The residents had blocked the street, on Línea and F, with barricades made with overturned garbage containers, fallen tree branches and other objects, and they confronted the pro-government battalion – which shouted revolutionary slogans such as “Fidel, Fidel” or “Viva Díaz-Canel”–, demanding not only “we want the light”, but “freedom”, “down with the dictatorship” and “Díaz-Canel singao”.
Although the regime wanted to sell that in no case was there repression and that rather the agents responded to “provocations” by violent protesters, the images broadcast by international mediasuch as the agencies EFE, Reuters or The Associated Press, show that those who were distributing blows were government agents.
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