HAVANA.- Cinco activists Cubans received sentences of up to seven years in prison for demonstrating in February 2023 against the regime, Prisoners Defenders reported on its social networks.
The Provincial People’s Court of Havana sentenced William Cepero García, Josiel Guía Piloto, Lázaro Romero Piloto, Alain Yosvani Cruz Suescum and Jesús Alfredo Pérez Rivas for the crime of “propaganda against the constitutional order” included in case 13/2024, details the web portal Cuban newspaper.
Pérez Rivas and Cepero García received a sentence of five years of imprisonment; Cruz Suescum five years of correctional labor without confinement, while Guía Piloto and Romero Piloto were sentenced to seven years in prison.
In 2019, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted Jesús Alfredo Pérez Rivas and Josiel Guía Piloto precautionary measures due to serious violations of their human rights perpetrated by the regime.
In the case of Guía Piloto, who was arrested in December 2016 and subsequently deprived of his liberty, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention determined in 2020 that his arrest and conviction were arbitrary. In 2019, Amnesty International declared the opposition figure a prisoner of conscience.
In February 2023, the former political prisoner sewed his mouth shut in protest against the police harassment he was suffering: operations to besiege him at his home and constant threats from State Security agents who went so far as to urge him to leave the country by boat.
His uncle, Lázaro Romero Piloto, was the one who sewed his mouth shut, while William Cepero recorded the protest and uploaded it to social media.
Subsequently, the five sentenced on June 20 took to the streets with signs of “Cuba failed state”, “Díaz-Canel murderer” and “Patria y Vida”.
Source: Editorial/With information from Diario de Cuba
