There is already a sentence in the trial against the artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and Maykel Castillo Osorbo, held on May 30 and 31 in Havana. In a statement made public by the Attorney General of the Republicthe People’s Municipal Court of Central Havana reported that the sentence for Alcántara is five years in prison for the crimes of outrage against the symbols of the country, contempt and public disorder, and for Osorbo, nine, for contempt, attack, public disorder and defamation of institutions and organizations, heroes and martyrs.
Although the judges lowered the requests of the Prosecutor’s Office –which was seven years for Alcántara and ten for Osorbo– they reached the “conviction about the facts proven in the oral hearing and their social harmfulness”, says the text, “determined the responsibility of those prosecuted, as well as the position assumed and the acts carried out by each one”.
Thus, de Alcántara, without mentioning that the facts to which they refer allude to the performance artistic drapeauthey say that he had “the express intention, sustained over time, of offending the national flag, by publishing photos on social networks where it is used in denigrating acts, accompanied by notoriously offensive and disrespectful expressions, belittling the feelings of nationality and pride that the Cuban people profess to our national flag”.
As for Osorbo, they argue that “he used digitally manipulated false images of these, which he made public on social networks; and for the same purpose he made direct interventions from his personal profile to dishonor the function that law enforcement officers perform in society,” without further details, “with the manifest purpose of outraging, affecting the honor and dignity of the country’s highest authorities.”
In the same process, Félix Roque Delgado, Juslid Justiz Lazo and Reina Sierra Duvergel were sentenced for the crime of attack.
In the same process, Félix Roque Delgado, Juslid Justiz Lazo and Reina Sierra Duvergel were sentenced for the crime of attack. The first, to five years in prison, and the second, to 3 years of “correctional work without internment.”
The trial of Alcántara and Osorbo, denounced by international organizations such as the UN and declared prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International, was characterized by harassment and repression to activists and journalists within the Island.
Those days, Alcántara was punished and without permission to make calls for having taken the audio he recorded last May 17 and disseminated by Claudia Genlui in which she spoke of the repression suffered in recent years, the offer of release from prison by exile that was made to her by the regime and she rejected; and of the fighting spirit that he wishes to transmit to his son and to the entire Cuban people. The artist, leader of the San Isidro Movement, has been in the Guanajay prison since July 2021, when he was arrested before being able to join the protests on the 11th of that month.
This same Wednesday, Alcántara’s official account reported: “Luis has just called. They have apparently removed his punishment. He is not in a very good mood, he continues to demand his freedom without conditions. About @MaykelCastill19 he comments that in the trial he saw him with a foot in bad condition due to a pimple. We don’t know if it has been taken care of”.
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