Leodán Pérez Colón, Yoel Castillo Cervantes and Yoanderley Quesada Marín, sentenced to several years in prison in Sancti Spíritus for the July 11 protests, did not even set foot on the street that day.
According to the judgment of his trial, signed on January 18 and to which 14ymedio had access this Monday, it was proven that what Pérez Colón did, inside his house and on July 16, was to carry out a direct transmission “to his contacts” – not even on social networks – in which he referred to President Miguel Díaz-Canel as “singao”, “pinga nose”, “son of a bitch” and “cock bastard”, which, the text continues, “stated for several minutes.”
With him were his friends Cristian Enrique García Rodríguez, Ernesto Alexis Rojas Pérez and José Antonio Rojas Pérez, who were also arrested but not convicted, and who testified against him, as can be seen from the legal document.
That video was precisely used on Cuban national television to discredit the protesters. In a post published before the trial of the three detainees, which took place on December 27, the Sancti Spiritus activist Néstor Estévez denounced that these images, as well as messages used to incriminate the defendants, “came from private audios of a WhatsApp group that he accessed the G2 after tapping the phones of the group’s participants”.
Thanks to “the certification of the Telecommunications Company”, Etecsa, “we learned the ownership of the telephone lines corresponding to the accused”
In the sentence, it can be read, in effect, that thanks to “the certification of the Telecommunications Company”, Etecsa, “we learned the ownership of the telephone lines corresponding to the accused, devices that were used by them in the perpetration of these events and we determine it by the expert opinions provided on criminal computer expertise of the resources and content published on the internet”.
According to the legal document, Pérez Colón, 22, created a group on WhatsApp under the name “Todos por la libertad”, to which he invited the other two defendants, Yoel Castillo, 21, and Yoanderley Quesada, of 25, who accepted the request. In that group, the first convict sent messages “urging to use burning bottles named ‘molotoff cocktails [sic]screws, stones thrown with arrows or sharp forks in the presence of members of the Ministry of the Interior and other institutions responsible for preserving social order in the city of Sancti Spiritus”.
Through this channel, the text continues, he contacted “the user named ‘Yuma Walter’ to whom he sent a message saying ‘I am locating people to put together a good team,'” and through Messenger, he wrote to the user “Irete Amir Olmo Eleguasito Bernal” telling him “I am looking for people from Bayamo, Kilo 12, this is fire against the PNR, Díaz Canel singao”.
Another group that he created on WhatsApp, always according to the ruling, is “Todo por la libertad USA”, which included “citizens Lisandra Enrique Guerras and Pedro Amir Tanquero Bernal, both residents abroad of the country.”
There is no evidence that those summoned organized any violent action, other than going, as they had announced in the group, to the house of Pérez Colón
The named Lisandra, the sentence refers, “accessed the group and published several photographic images in which Molotoff cocktails were observed [así escrito en el texto legal]screws and shoot arrows and wrote ‘use this, don’t let yourselves be intimidated, they don’t have weapons, but there are ways, don’t let them take anyone away, shoot them with arrows, stick a knife in them, you are more than a bunch of whistleblower policemen ‘”.
There is no evidence that those summoned organized any violent action, other than going, as they had announced in the group, “everyone to Villalla’s house” (as written Biyaya, the nickname by which he is known by his friends Pérez Colón). There is also no trace of the accusation contained in the list of prisoners maintained by the collective Justice 11Jaccording to which Pérez Colón would have stoned a nearby MLC store.
However, Pérez Colón, who had a history of robbery with force for which he had served several years in prison, was sentenced to a total of 5 years for criminal association and contempt, and Quesada Marín and Castillo Cervantes, only for criminal association, to two years in prison the first and one year and ten months the second (discounting in the case of Castillo and Pérez the months of preventive detention).
All of them also had their cell phones confiscated.
On the other hand, 14ymedio He also agreed to another unprecedented sentence from Sancti Spíritus, the one that sentenced, on October 18, Luis Mario Niedas Hernández to three years in prison for “continued contempt of character.”
“That they put them all in prison, that the Minister of Culture is shameless, that the State Security agents were the insecurity of the State and state terrorists”, “that the president of the country is a thief, a demagogue”
The account of the events in the document indicates that what he did was make three direct broadcasts, on January 29, July 10, and the following day, in which he uttered, among other expressions, “that they put them all in jail, that the Minister of Culture is shameless, that the State Security agents were State insecurity and state terrorists”, “that the country’s president is a thief, a demagogue” or, referring to Cuba’s leaders, “That they were freeloaders, shameless, corrupt, they steal all the country’s resources and deposit them abroad, the sons of bitches who run this country, who live like capitalists.”
Niedas Hernández, as the Sancti Spiritus activist Néstor Estévez explained to this newspaper, was the only one of the 42 detainees in Sancti Spíritus who actually went out on the streets on July 11.
His sentence says that outside his house, he made a direct statement in which he said: “Díaz-Canel singao, we want a country, not a farm run by four sons of bitches” and that, later, “he went to the vicinity of the buildings located in Los Olivos I, in the municipality and province of Sancti Spíritus, and from there he headed towards multi-family buildings number 2 and 3 located near the Provincial Government facility and began to refer aloud, among other phrases, ‘down with Díaz Canel , Díaz Canel son of a bitch, I shit on Díaz Canel, Díaz Canel singao ‘”.
Niedas has lived in the Nieves-Morejón prison, where he is, isolation in punishment cells and mistreatment.
The 31-year-old young man was arrested on 11J, but had previously been harassed and pressured for being politically active. he told it himself in a chronicle published by yucabyte days before that Sunday of protests. “My activism, like that of many, began from the pressures of the regime,” he wrote. “It was enough for me to support the causes defended by the San Isidro Movement and the 27N group on social networks for the weight of the arbitrariness of this dictatorship to fall on me. Because yes, publishing a simple post on Facebook in Cuba that does not have the approval of the Government, implies almost the same as standing with a sign in front of the headquarters of the provincial Communist Party (PCC) asking for the resignation of the president. There is no freedom, not even in cyberspace”.
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