The Popular Provincial Court of Havana sanctioned him for the alleged crime of “propaganda against the constitutional order”; He has been arbitrarily detained since December 2024.
MADRID, Spain.- The Popular Provincial Court of Havana sentenced the rapper and plastic artist Fernando Almenares Rivera, known artistically as Nando OBDC, to five years in prison for the alleged crime of “propaganda against the constitutional order,” after placing banners with political messages and in favor of human rights in public spaces in the capital.
According to the ruling, consulted by the Cubalex Legal Advice Center, The court maintains that the artist “painted political messages on fragments of fabric and placed them on public roads,” and that these actions had the purpose of “disturbing citizen tranquility,” “creating discontent in the population” and “stimulating actions against the social order established in the country.”
The events date back to August 2024, when Almenares displayed several posters on a section of the Monumental Highway in Havana. For this action he was prosecuted under article 124 of the Penal Code, which punishes “propaganda against the constitutional order” with sentences of three to eight years in prison, a legal figure that allows the Cuban dictatorship to criminalize peaceful demonstrations of dissent.
Nando OBDC has been detained since December 31, 2024. That day, his home was searched by State Security agents under the initial accusation of an alleged crime of “sabotage.” As documented by Cubalex, during the operation “the only thing occupied was a Cuban flag.” Months later, the Prosecutor’s Office modified the legal classification and prosecuted him for “propaganda against the constitutional order”, based on his artistic action.
Cubalex denounces that the case presents serious irregularities. The organization stressed that “the creation of political messages on fragments of fabric constitutes a form of symbolic expression, protected by international human rights law,” and warned that the inconsistencies between the initial reason for the search, the change in criminal classification and the lack of clear link between the alleged evidence and the charged crime “evidence violations of due process and the principle of criminal legality.”
The Cuban Youth Dialogue Tablefor its part, when denouncing the sentence this Monday, described the trial held on November 26, 2025 as “a farce” and denounced the political nature of the sentence. In his statement he pointed out that the sentence itself affirms that the artist “painted phrases with counterrevolutionary content” and placed them on public roads, which, in his opinion, confirms that an expression of a civic and symbolic nature is being punished.
The organization also cited a fragment of the ruling in which it states that “the accused FERNANDO ALMENARES RIVERA meets with people disaffected to the revolutionary process and linked to criminal acts, and has no criminal record,” a formulation that criminalizes dissidence and demonstrates the arbitrariness of the process.
In its statement, the Dialogue Table demanded that the magistrates who signed the sentence—Kenia Reyes Lara, Jesús Pérez Benavides, Patricia González Vera, Gil Amado Payne Hernández and Simón Mario Reyes Balmaceda—be included in lists of repressors for their participation in the unjust conviction.
The Nando OBDC case joins a long list of criminal proceedings against artists and creators in Cuba for exercising their right to freedom of expression. For independent legal and civic organizations, his conviction confirms the use of criminal law as a tool to punish critical expressions and peaceful artistic actions, in a context of growing criminalization of dissent.
