Daniel Joel Cárdenas Díez, sentenced to 15 years for the protests of July 11, 2021 in Cárdenas (Matanzas), was denied the appeal filed on January 9. As reported by Marbelis Vázquez to 14ymediothe lawyer let him know that they had rejected the appeal and that they stayed the same years that had been requested.
“It means that this six-month wait has been in vain,” Vázquez lamented. “They didn’t even give him a chance to rectify him, to give him another hearing,” he declared before entering the visiting area of the maximum security prison in Agüica, in Colón.
Cárdenas, who during his detention by uniformed special troops, three days after 11J, was wounded in the head by a shot and received blows to the chest and back, is in prison for the crimes of sabotage, public disorder and spread of epidemics.
“Now the sentence is final and I am truly disconcerted,” Vazquez explained a CubaNet. The hope of being able to change the fate of Cárdenas was buried after the lawyer’s call. “My children are going to grow up without that father’s love, without a united family, incredible, all this they are doing is unfair.”
“They had no mercy on my husband or my children,” Vázquez said in an interview with 14ymedio last May. “I still close my eyes and remember that moment. My children carry with them a trauma that they will never forget”
In the video that Vázquez recorded the day of the arrest and that he spread on social networks, military personnel are seen carrying small arms while entering the house to arrest Cárdenas.
“They had no mercy on my husband or my children,” Vazquez pointed out in an interview with 14ymedio last May. “I still close my eyes and remember that moment. My children carry with them a trauma that they will never forget.”
During the three-day trial, from December 8 to 10, Cárdenas was treated as “a criminal.” They took him, handcuffed and handcuffed, to a trial that for Vázquez was “a staged circus with false witnesses.”
The activist Salomé García Bacallao posted on social media that “the Military Prosecutor’s Office did the same with those accused of sabotage in Colón, Matanzas. They did not have an oral hearing or hearing either.” And he recalled that “firm sentences without change” were given. One of them, that of Rolando Sardiñas, the koka, 12 years in prison. “Another due process violation.”
Aylín, sister of Sardiñas, indicated that “there was no reduction in the appeal” of the sentence, even though there were irregularities and they imposed crimes on him that did not correspond to his actions.” Not even an oral hearing. “Who will give him back those years that they have decided take away?” he wondered.
________________________
Collaborate with our work:
The team of 14ymedio is committed to doing serious journalism that reflects the reality of deep Cuba. Thank you for joining us on this long road. We invite you to continue supporting us, but this time becoming a member of our journal. Together we can continue transforming journalism in Cuba.
