Havana/The United States said this Thursday that it was “outraged” at the complaints from relatives, human rights NGOs and Cuban dissident organizations who claim that the opponent and prisoner for political reasons José Daniel Ferrer is hospitalized after having received a “brutal beating.”
“Outraged to hear the reports that José Daniel Ferrer was beaten in prison and transferred to another facility,” the State Department’s Latin America manager, Brian Nichols, said in his X account.
“We call on the Government of Cuba to allow immediate access to his family and release him, along with the nearly 1,000 political prisoners unjustly detained in Cuba,” he added.
Ferrer’s sister reported this Wednesday that she became aware of the situation thanks to the testimony of a prisoner in the Boniato prison, in Santiago de Cuba, which has a hospital where Ferrer was taken from the Mar Verde prison, in the same province. , where he has been serving his sentence since 2021.
According to sources, Ferrer was seriously attacked and, since he could not be properly treated at the Mar Verde infirmary, he had to be transferred.
The leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) has allegedly been admitted to Room A of the Boniato prison infirmary for three days, although no details are known about his state of health, which according to his family had deteriorated significantly. in recent months in prison by adding different conditions to previous conditions related to his stays in prison.
The Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba denounced this Thursday “this act of violence, which shows the systematic dehumanization of conditions in Cuban prisons.”
The Cuban Democratic Directorate, based in Miami, held responsible for what may happen to Ferrer “the communist regime of Cuba in its entirety, especially the hitmen of the dictatorship who serve as prison officers. We demand proof of José’s life Daniel Ferrer, his freedom, as well as freedom for all political prisoners in Cuba,” adds the statement from this exile group.
Cuban civil society organizations and personalities asked last August that the political and prisoner of conscience José Daniel Ferrer García be nominated for the Sakharov Prize, awarded by the European Parliament and which was finally awarded to the Venezuelans María Corina Machado and Edmundo González.
Cuban civil society organizations and personalities asked last August that the political and prisoner of conscience José Daniel Ferrer García be nominated for the Sakharov Prize
As reported then in a statement by the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, based in Madrid, the petition is signed by a “coalition of human rights organizations” with the objective of achieving the “protection and safeguard” of Ferrer, whose physical and psychological is at “extreme risk.”
On July 11, 2021, Ferrer was arrested, along with his son, for participating in popular protests against Castroism, while he was under house arrest.
Since then, he remains in Mar Verde, where he has been subjected to “mistreatment and violations of UN recommendations on the treatment of prisoners.”
In December 2022, he began a hunger strike in prison and since March 2023 he has not received family or conjugal visits and has been living poorly in an isolated cell with hardly any light.
His last known visit was that of the archbishop of Santiago de Cuba, Dionisio García Ibáñez, and the priest Camilo de la Paz, in charge of the Penitentiary Pastoral of the diocese, on September 7. According to his wife, Nelva Ortega Tamayo, they found him in a state of health that was “not entirely good,” although strong in spirit.
