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Cuba. Jose Daniel Ferrer among those released. “I'm at home, healthy, I have courage”

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Cuban dissident and human rights activist Jose Daniel Ferrer told Reuters on Thursday that he had been released from prison and was staying at home. This is the result of mediations conducted by the Vatican, according to which 553 prisoners are to be released from prison.

“The first prisoners from the group of 553 prisoners requested by the Vatican were released from prisons in Cuba on Wednesday,” independent Cuban media reported. Among those released on Wednesday were activists considered political prisoners, including Dariel Cruz Garcia, Lisdiana Rodriguez Isaac and Donaida Perez Paseiro.

Jose Daniel Ferrer is the most important prisoner and dissident to be freed so far. “I am at home, healthy, I have the courage to continue the fight for Cuba's freedom,” Ferrer told Reuters in a short telephone interview.

José Daniel Ferrer (2015)Alejandro Ernesto/EPA/PAP

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Numerous arrests of Ferrer

Ferrer, the leader of the Cuban Patriotic Union (UNPACU), once the largest and most active opposition group in a country ruled for decades by communists, was arrested in 2003 as part of a nationwide crackdown known as the Black Spring. In 2011 he was released on parole.

However, in October 2019, on charges of kidnapping and assaulting a man, he was sentenced to four years in prison, with most of the sentence served under house arrest. Cuban authorities then said Ferrer was a dissident financed by USAbut assured that he was not arrested for his political views. Critics say the prosecution was based on fabricated evidence.

Ferrer was detained again on July 11, 2021, when he tried to join a protest in Stantiago de Cuba, Cuba's second-largest city. His behavior was said to be a violation of the terms of his house arrest. As a result, he was charged with disturbing public order and returned to prison.

Cuban authorities release political prisoners

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel announced the release from prisons on Tuesday, adding that they were serving sentences “for various crimes.”

READ ALSO: Havana will release prisoners, Cuba will disappear from the list of countries supporting terrorism

Organization human rights Prisoners Defenders reported that at the beginning of January there were 1,161 opponents of the Cuban regime in prison. According to estimates by the authorities of Prisoners Defenders and another non-governmental organization, Justicia 11J, about half of those incarcerated in Cuban prisons are people detained during the protests of July 2021. Anti-government protests in Cuba were the largest demonstrations by the island's inhabitants since the end of the Cuban Revolution in 1959. Demonstrating citizens demanded, above all, an effective policy of the regime in Havana in the fight against the increasing shortages of food and medicines.

Main photo source: Alejandro Ernesto/EPA/PAP



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