Opposition leader José Daniel Ferrer released after negotiations between the Cuban regime and the Vatican

Havana/José Daniel Ferrer, leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), was released this Thursday. “I don’t know the conditions, if it was under extra-penal license, if it was parole, I don’t know, but they say he is going home,” he reported. Carlos Amel Oliva in a video released by the Prisoners Defenders organization, and confirmed by the opponent’s sister, Ana Belkis Ferrer.

The dissident’s wife, Nelva Ortega, had been called the day before by the authorities to appear this morning at the Mar Verde prison, in Santiago de Cuba, where the opponent had been imprisoned since July 11, 2021.

In his first statements after his release, Martí News, Ferrer assured: “They threw me out of prison because I did not accept parole.” The authorities, in any case, warned him that “if he does not comply with the norms of socialist society” they will “prosecute him again in court.”

“They threw me out of prison because I did not accept parole”

The Unpacu leader stated that, although he has health problems, none of them affect his “desire to continue fighting for democracy and human rights.” “I’m ready, I’m going to continue doing what I’ve always done,” he stressed, while asking the opposition “to be more united than ever.”

In an interview with the Spanish newspaper The WorldFerrer said he felt “embarrassed by this agreement, by the way in which the Biden administration and the Vatican have handled it.” And he continued: From the terms of the statement published by the regime, it seems that they have just been defeated in three rounds, as if by chance they decided to give freedom to the 553 prisoners. If Biden and the Vatican do not deny this, they would play along with a thug similar to Pablo Escobar, who does what he wants, an ally of Nicolás Maduro and Vladimir Putin. They boast that both Washington and the Pope have done their will. “They have been disrespected.”

Likewise, he estimated: “If the regime has not eliminated me like Osvaldo Payá, it is thanks to the supportive MEPs and the good press of the free world.”

For its part, the Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba, of which Ferrer is president, celebrated this Thursday, in a statement, the release of the opponent, and thanked “deeply the role of the Vatican in mediating this important step.” However, he clarified that other prisoners, such as Félix Navarro, 71, should also be released.

“Current releases are nothing more than a form of imprisonment without bars”

“We reiterate our urgent call for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners and the decriminalization of dissent in Cuba,” they insist in their text. “Freedom cannot be conditioned. Current releases are nothing more than a form of imprisonment without bars, where rules of ‘good behavior’ are imposed. In reality, this means that anyone who exercises their right to freedom of expression will be sent back to prison to serve the rest of her sentence.”

In any case, Ferrer’s release, like that of Luis Robles Elizastiguialso this Thursday, were among the most anticipated since the Cuban regime announced, on Tuesday night, that they would be released from prison 553 people as part of a negotiation with the Vatican. An hour earlier the president’s order had been made public Joe Biden to remove Cuba from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism, in addition to other measures, which the Island has done everything possible to separate from the release of prisoners.

Ferrer had been locked up in the Mar Verde prison, without trial, since July 11, 2021when he was arrested before being able to join the massive demonstrations that day. His situation in prison, subjected to all kinds of abuse and humiliationhas been denounced on numerous occasions not only by her family and by non-profit organizations such as Amnesty International or Prisoners Defenders, but by international governments, including United States and the European Union.

On November 18, the opponent had to be hospitalized after receiving a beating in the Mar Verde prison

On November 18, the opponent had to be admitted to the hospital at the Boniato prison in Santiago after receive a beating in Mar Verde at the hands of prison staff. His wife, Nelva Ortega, was able to see him at the beginning of December, for the first time in more than twenty monthsin which he had been systematically denied conjugal visits.

However, they did not give him access to the food that his family had brought him to prison, after which went on hunger strike.

The dissident leader, part of the group of prisoners of the Black Spring of 2003, with a death sentence commuted to 25 years in prison, was released after eight years thanks to the efforts of the Vatican and the mediation of Spain. Since then, he has never stopped his dissident work at the head of Unpacu nor, as a consequence, being harassed by State Security.

For his part, Luis Robles Elizastigui, called the “young man with the banner” for the reason for his arrest – raising a poster on the central San Rafael Boulevard, in December 2020, calling for the release of rapper Denis Solís, then detained, He was serving a five-year sentence in the Combinado del Este maximum security prison in Havana.

The 30-year-old activist has suffered several health problems since entering the prison.

His mother, Yindra Elizastiguione of the most active in asking for the freedom of her son and all political prisoners, expressed her bittersweet feelings on their social networks. “Today, of the sadness and consternation that my family is experiencing taking into account the unjust confinement that my son Lester and my son-in-law Alejaime Lambert Reyes are still suffering, and the hospitalization of my children’s father, who is in intensive care due to to a cerebral infarction, a ray of light has come to us,” he wrote about Robles’ release. The woman indicated “that she only has four months and days left until her complete release” and apologized for not being “as expressive as always.” “I need you to understand our pain,” he apologized.

Just in February of last year, long after his due date, Robles received his first prison pass and was able to return home to visit his family. The 30-year-old activist has suffered several health problems since entering the prison, which have been reported by his mother, in addition to mistreatment, and ophthalmological and gastric complications. He has also been denied appropriate medical assistance.

Little by little, without official information and through, above all, social networks, the names of those released. of them The Cuban Government did not give further detailsnor for what crimes they were convicted, nor if all of them are, in fact, political prisoners.

Dariel Cruz García, another of those released on Wednesday, belongs to this last group. His mother, Yaquelín Cruz García, tells 14ymedio How have you lived these first 24 hours in freedom. The woman assures that she feels “good and happy” to finally have her by her side. The Bolusas his neighborhood also knows him, although he fears that “something will happen, because here in Cuba the situation is very bad and they want to put him in jail again.”

Cruz García feels that the anxiety continues. “He is under a conditional release regime and they have to follow the rules imposed on him,” he details. “If my son had been given total freedom and could leave the country, I would do everything possible for him to leave Cuba as soon as possible, even if it was for Haiti,” he says. “Today they already summoned him to the police station and his sanction doesn’t end until next year, so until then he has to walk by the thread, if they don’t put him in prison again.”

“He is under a conditional release regime and they have to follow the rules imposed on him”

Cruz García, now 23 years old, was arrested on July 16, 2021, after participating, on the previous July 12, in the demonstrations that took place in La Güinerain the Havana municipality of Arroyo Naranjo, where there was the only death from 11J recognized by the authorities, Diubis Laurencio Tejadaat the hands of the Police, that went unpunished. With a prosecutor’s request for 15 years in prison for sedition, he was finally sentenced to 8 years in prison, and managed, through a cassation trial, to be temporarily released from prison with a change of sanction to correctional work with confinement. Interned again, he received a final sentence of 5 years of correctional work with confinement.

On Wednesday, the vice president of the Supreme People’s Court, Maricela Sosa Raveloclarified on state television that the measure is not an amnesty or a pardon, words that, in fact, do not appear in the statement issued on Tuesday by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to the official’s explanation, the amnesty and pardon “entail the total extinction of the sanction”, something that does not happen in these cases.

In an interview with regime spokesman Humberto López, Ravelo said that, on the contrary, these prisoners have been given “early release benefits.” If they do not comply with their “obligations,” he warned, they could return to prison. Those on the list were prosecuted for “dissimilar” crimes, and it listed: “Property crimes such as crimes of theft, robbery with force. There are threats, there are injuries, there are disorders. There are also some people who were punished for sedition, but sedition is not a political crime.”

The crime of sedition, for example, was charged to the 11J protesters who received the highest sentences, up to 20 years in prison (although in some cases was later reduced).

Those released so far are: