With an anonymous call and the possession of pellets and a slingshot as evidence, Jimmy Johnson Agosto, arrested last week in Nuevitas, Camagüey, for participating in the demonstrations last month, has been accused of sabotage, a crime considered to be the most serious for being directed against national security.
The relatives of the 26-year-old confirmed that State Security charged Agosto with this crime for allegedly throwing stones at the local power plant using pellets that were seized during a search of his home.
“They say that what they used in the plant were quingle balls (cement pellets), and stones like those were what they found in Jimmy’s house, but there in Nuevitas, anyone has that. Even I had it,” said Isabel Cristina Agosto. Grimal, mother of the young detainee, to CyberCuba.
Johnson Agosto was arrested on September 6 when he returned from an electroencephalogram after suffering an epileptic episode. The platform 11J reported at the time that the arrest occurred after an anonymous caller accused the young man of damaging the glass of a store during the Nuevitas protests in late August.
Hours later, they replaced the crime of damage to property with that of sabotage and imposed preventive detention as a precautionary measure.
Johnson Agosto was arrested on September 6 when he returned from an electroencephalogram after suffering an episode of epilepsy.
In a complaint published on their networks, the journalist Annarella O’Mahony pointed out that the arrest of the young man could be a reprisal from the regime for being his cousin. “It was a matter of time and the rope broke on you, a child from a forgotten neighborhood, a child with an immense heart. I have not been able to write you a single line, my good boy, but you can live convinced that I am moving heaven and earth for you,” he wrote in a note released on September 8.
His family assures that they have not yet been able to communicate with him directly since he was arrested and taken to the Nuevitas Police unit, but was later transferred to the State Security prison in Camagüey, where he spent three days under interrogation. without being able to access a lawyer, change clothes or have medicine to control epileptic seizures.
O’Mahony denounced that the Constitution of the Republic was violated by denying due process to the young detainee, “as they usually do with all citizens and political prisoners.”
The organization Prisoners Defenders (PD) reported last Thursday that there are 1,016 political prisoners in Cuba, 43 detained in September alone and 904 for the demonstrations on July 11, 2021.
Following the demonstrations in Nuevitas, the most massive since 11J, hundreds of arrests have been made, including adults and minors beaten “savagely” by security forces, the organization warned.
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