Alexander Fábregas Milanés has not had peace since he was released last April, after serving a nine-month sentence for calling a demonstration on July 11, 2021 through social networks.
The 32-year-old from Sancti Spíritus is being harassed by State Security and, on Tuesday, was threatened in an interrogation with going back to jail if he continued to publicly show his activism, to which in any case he had announced that he was not going. to resign.
Appointed at the Vivac of his city at one in the afternoon on Tuesday, Fábregas and his mother, Luisa María Milanés, who accompanied him, decided to leave there as they were not attended. They had not gone three blocks when a State Security car stopped them and they were taken back to the police center.
There, the young man details, “they told me that if I continued to be an activist on social networks, I would be punished by the new Penal Code with 20 years in prison.” The norm, approved by the National Assembly last maywill enter into force 90 days after the Official Gazette is published.
“Lieutenant Colonel Wilfredo Pérez, with a lot of cynicism, told me that he was already wrapping up my paper to put me back in jail, that he was going to make it for me, just like he did to me on 11J”
According to Fábregas, in front of an instructor who filled out the corresponding forms, a woman dressed as a nurse and “a new officer” assigned to his case named “Luisito”, Fábregas refers, “Lieutenant Colonel Wilfredo Pérez, with great cynicism, He said that he was already wrapping me up to put me in prison again, that he was going to make it for me well, just like he did on 11J, and this time if it wasn’t going to be the same as the previous sentence”.
Fábregas was arrested on the night of July 11 at his home, for transmitting on his social networks his call to take to the streets of Sancti Spíritus to accompany the protests that took place that day in other provinces of the Island.
Nine days after his arrest and in a summary judgment, Fábregas was sentenced to nine months in prison for the crime of incitement to commit a crime, although he did not set foot on the street that July 11. He only managed to have a defense attorney one day before the trial, his family then denounced.
Although the young man belonged to the United Anti-Totalitarian Forum (Fantu), at the time of his call to take to the streets he was “an opponent on his own account,” according to his mother. In December 2020, he had already spent three days in detention, after he published a photo on social networks where he appeared with a sign that said: “No More Misery”.
Fábregas’s mother, who together with her son has suffered all this time State security pressurewas also questioned on Tuesday, despite not being summoned.
“I think that what they are doing is preventing a new July 11 in Cuba and they are beginning to threaten all those who they think have the courage to demonstrate,” is the explanation of the young man from Sancti Spiritus for the harassment they are suffering. “Also because I have appeared on television in Miami, on América TeVé, and because since I came out of my unjust confinement I have continued my activism on social media and have contributed to help my brother prisoners.”
In this regard, he mentions Luis Mario Niedas, sentenced to three years in prison for continued contempt of character and is serving a sentence in the Nieves-Morejón prison. “We are being deprived of approaching the family of Luis Mario Niedas,” denounces Fábregas, “with the aim of getting away from his side and making him feel alone and forgotten.”
“We are being deprived of approaching the family of Luis Mario Niedas”, denounces Fábregas, “with the aim of getting away from him and making him feel alone and forgotten”
Neither in prison nor out of it, Alexander Fábregas never renounced his dissidence. “I will continue to be a defender of human rights in Cuba and, especially, here in Sancti Spíritus,” said Fábregas in interview with 14ymedio after being released, although he kept in mind: “I have to be careful, because I already have a criminal record and surely they will want to continue citing me and harassing me”.
This same Thursday, the Cuban Prosecutor’s Office reported four other firm sentences, against 33 participants of 11J, in this case in Havana and Mayabeque. The defendants were sentenced, “fundamentally”, specifies a note in Granma, for crimes of sedition, sabotage and public disorder.
A total of 30 received prison sentences, 10 of them, between 10 and 18 years, and 20, between 5 and 9, says the official report, without further details, which adds that two others “were subsidized” the sentence ” for correctional work without internment” and to a third party, “for limitation of freedom”.
Four days ago, the Prosecutor’s Office estimated that 381 people had been firmly convicted after the 11J demonstrations. In an official note, the Prosecutor’s Office indicated that 76 sentences no longer admit appeal and have resulted in sentences of deprivation of liberty for 297 people, of which 36 committed a crime of sedition, according to Cuban judges. All the people convicted of these acts received between 5 and 25 years in prison.
The NGO Prisoners Defenders (PD) then attacked the data from the Prosecutor’s Office, which they described as “biased” and “fake news”. “It is already suspicious that the Prosecutor’s Office in charge of prosecuting the 11J protesters does not talk about those who are prosecuted and limits its report, as they explicitly say, to 76 sentences that have become firm,” Javier Larrondo, president of PD, who denounces that “hundreds of defendants fail to report and even hundreds of sentenced, who are already languishing in prison.”
The objective, according to Larrondo, is “to deceive the press so that it communicates that there are only 381 people sanctioned in Cuba.” And he asserts: “There are more than 1,000 processed, 726 sentenced”, of which he assures that the NGO has all the documentation.
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