Madrid/Virgilio Mantilla Arango, founding leader of the Camagüeyan Unit for Human Rights, was released this Sunday, as confirmed by his family and friends on social networks, including the activist and lady of Blanco Leticia Ramos Herrería, who requested basic help for the opponent.
“I have never asked for anything for me, but for fighting brothers. Virgilio Mantilla Arango has just been released and is in the worst of miseries. Not a sleeping sheet has, telephone or anything. I call on all the friends and brothers of exile who can help him with whatever,” he asked in his Facebook account late on Sunday, after talking to him.
Mantilla Arango was released after having extinguished his sentence in prison. The opponent was convicted in 2021 after the historic anti -government protests of July 11, although he had already passed through jail and subsequently also accumulated sentences against.
In 2020, Arango Mantilla He expressed their solidarity with the members of the San Isidro Movement that were quartered in November to claim freedom and democracy and were arrested by the authorities, who accused them of contravening sanitary norms to contain COVID-19. Accused of “monopolizing food”, the opponent was sentenced to seven months in prison in the kilo-7 prison in Camagüey. On July 4, the penalty was released, it was released, but it lasted just over a week.
The opponent was sentenced in 2021 after the historic anti -government protests of July 11, although he had already passed through jail and, subsequently, he also accumulated sentences against
On July 16, after the protests, Mantilla Arango was again detained with other protesters and sentenced to three years and three months in prison in September 2021. In October 2024 he would have fulfilled his penalty, but she was added 10 months after being accused of contempt for claiming, together with other inmates, better conditions in the prisons. The complaint was also worth a few days in isolation.
Last June, his sister Kenya Mompié Mantilla had to go out to deny a rumor that had circulated on his prison murder, although it was finally another un specified imprisonment.
“Virgil, always yesterday, today and always reaffirms with blunt words that has left the prison greatly spiritually strengthened and his mood is very contagious and positive,” activist Mary Lugo said in networks, after a conversation on Sunday with Mantilla Arango.
“Today, the prison authorities told him about his freedom and he told the officers that, if they did not want, they would not release it, because he was not going to stop fighting for the good of the people and protesting for so many injustices, as he effectively has just done in this conversation where he asks that the horrible situation of the prisoners be denounced and the sadness of seeing his people suffer so much,” he added.
The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, based in Madrid, echoed on Monday of its release and denounced the Calvary passed by the opponent, which “for more than four years was jailed in inhuman conditions, generating constant complaints of human rights violations.”
