Madrid/The Cuban regime’s contempt for political prisoners not only goes through have braked the releases promised in an agreement with the Vatican, but because of the cruelty against some of the opponents still in jail. This is the case of Sissi Abascal and Sayli Navarro, who have been explicitly denied the benefits to which they are entitled.
According to what he told Martí News Annia Zamoramother of Abascal and, like her, Lady in White, both her daughter and Navarro were taken on Tuesday to the management of the La Bellotex prison, in Matanzas, where they were informed of the conditions in which they will be kept for six more months. To Sayli Navarro, daughter of the opponent Felix Navarro –he was released from prison last Saturday–, they deny him “moving to a less severe regime”, explained Zamora, so he will have to be in a “severe regime”, in which Sissi Abascal also remains, to whom he They communicated in September.
“In a closed cubicle, behind bars, in uniform all the time,” forced to shower with ice water and only at night, describes the situation of activists Annia Zamora in an audio recording. “Even the calls are controlled; What Sissi Abascal and Sayli Navarro say is heard by an officer, and not just any officer, a high-ranking officer.”
“The situation of my daughter and all the political prisoners is worrying. The repression against them is very strong”
The 120 days of sentence reduction that corresponds to Sissi Abascal, her mother continued, will be zero, “for continuing to be a negative prisoner.” And he laments: “The situation of my daughter and all the political prisoners is worrying. The repression is very strong against them.”
Zamora, who found out about all this on Wednesday, when he attended his daughter’s statutory visit, told this Friday 14ymedio that in these two days there has been no news: “Now until Monday, when they call, we will not have any news.”
Meanwhile, the organizations still have no news of releases, since the last ones that occurred last weekend. Javier Larrondo, president of the organization Prisoners Defenders (PD), based in Madrid, declares to 14ymedio They have been able to confirm around 190 released political prisoners, although they have yet to confirm about 20 more.
Asked by this newspaper if his NGO is aware that they have released common prisoners, Larrondo is forceful: “Of course they are releasing common prisoners, hundreds, in fact.” And he claims to have received reports of “six here, three there, four there.”
“Of course they are releasing common prisoners, hundreds, in fact”
The activist ventures that the regime “must have agreed on around 200 political prisoners” and to them he added 353 common prisoners, which would complete the number promised in his statement of last January 14“to deceive us all.” For him, the total figure given by the regime “is very emblematic”, because it is approximately the same as that handled by both PD and Justice 11J of imprisoned July 11, 2021 protesters. “What they have done is, subliminally, let us deceive ourselves, and think that they are prisoners of 11J.”
Likewise, it regrets that there are international media that are attributing the stoppage of releases to Donald Trump’s executive decision, hours after taking office, on the 20th, to once again include the Island in the list of countries sponsoring the terrorism, from which her predecessor, Joe Biden, had removed her just six days before.
They can assure this, he explains, “because the Government of Cuba called one or two days before their release to tell them that they had to be in prison, and the day before Donald Trump’s measures the Cuban regime did not call any family, not a single one.” According to estimates, “the Cuban regime scheduled the releases until Donald Trump took office.”
