MIAMI, United States. — Opposition member Yoan Ricardo Llerena, human rights activist and promoter of Cuba Decideswas arrested this Friday in Las Tunas, confirmed sources to CubaNet.
His wife, Disnelbys Danitza Vidal Pérez, assured this newspaper that Llerena was taken to a police unit near his town, and that he was later transferred to the Manati municipality.
“Yoan was taken into custody. First, the sector chief summoned him to take him to the Unit. Another sector chief was waiting for him there, plus one from the head of the PTI and another Security officer,” the woman declared.
When Vidal Pérez went to the police sector to take her husband’s identity card, he had already been taken from the place.
“When I arrived to deposit the card, because he left without a card, they had already taken him in the patrol to the municipality of Manatí,” revealed the opponent’s wife.
According to the source, the police offered no explanation for the arrest of Yoan Ricardo Llerena.
“Why they cite it, the reason as such, they do not let me know. They just told me they took it away; that I asked the head of the folder there, the guard, for information, because they were not in the duty of telling me why they had taken him, that they did not have to give that explanation”.
In recent years, Yoan Ricardo Llerena has been the victim of persecution by the political police in Las Tunas.
In January 2023, the human rights activist denounced the harassment of which he was a victim by two officers who threatened him with imprisonment for making a video together with other opponents from the province of Las Tunas in support of an international trial initiative against the Cuban regime.
A month earlier, the opponent had warned about the continuous harassment of the political police against him for trying to leave the country. On that occasion, the authorities imposed an expensive fine on him and threatened to initiate legal proceedings against him.
