A photo of the well-known Cuban opposition figure José Daniel Ferrer in the patio of his house in Santiago de Cuba announces to the world that he has been released from prison, after almost four years in which he has fallen ill and faced all kinds of harassment in the Mar Verde prison. . The image, in which you can see a Ferrer who has lost weight, dressed in black pants and a white sweater, drawing the symbol of freedom with the fingers of his left hand, was shared by his sister Ana Belkis Ferrer on social networks. “They release my brave brother,” he said. He also asked for freedom for “all” political prisoners, a demand that has gone viral and that demands the release not only of the 553 prisoners agreed with Joe Biden’s Government, but of the more than 1,500 political prisoners who remain in Cuban prisons. .
“I am very excited,” Ana Belkis assured EL PAÍS. “This morning, when I received the information that the wife had to go to prison, we imagined that they were going to release him. As soon as he arrived, they took José Daniel out and told them that he was released from prison.”
The sister says that the prison officials made him read “a pamphlet of conditions,” to which Ferrer responded that “it did not limit conditions of any kind, because he was kidnapped by the dictatorship, and they had to know that he was going to continue his activism in defense of human rights and the freedom of all the Cuban people.”
The dissident leader was granted conditional release, the legal figure under which – along with extra-penal license – the Cuban Government is releasing hundreds of prisoners after the Biden Administration eliminated Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. in which he appeared alongside North Korea, Iran and Syria.
Ferrer, one of the most prominent Cuban dissidents, leader of the opposition organization Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), is released from prison two days after the Cuban Government began releasing prisoners, some detained during the anti-system protests of July 2021. The Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH) has so far been able to confirm the release of 36 political prisoners.
Yesterday, Wednesday, his sister had publicly let it be known that the family had not been notified of the possible release of the opposition leader. But this morning Ana Belkis announced that Ferrer’s wife, Nelva Ismarays Ortega Tamayo, and his five-year-old son Daniel José were on their way to prison, after the authorities asked them to appear at the scene.
This is Ferrer’s second release after mediations in which the Vatican intervenes. During the so-called Black Spring of 2003, in which the Cuban Government persecuted and sentenced 75 opponents to between 6 and 28 years, Ferrer was arrested and sentenced to 25. The Prosecutor’s Office even requested the death penalty for him. In 2011, at 40 years old, he was released with an extra-penal license after dialogue between Raúl Castro’s Executive, the Catholic Church and the Spanish Government.
The leader of UNPACU and president of the Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba (CTDC), who served 54 years in prison in July, was in prison for a sentence of four years and 14 days for the crimes of contempt and disobedience after joining to the protests in the central Parque Céspedes in Santiago de Cuba, which were replicated throughout the country on July 11, 2021. But prison is a place that Ferrer, the face most visible of the dissident movement in the interior of the island since the death of Oswaldo Payá, knows up close. At the time of his last arrest, Ferrer remained under house arrest after being arrested in 2019 and convicted of the alleged crime of injuring another man. In 2018 he was also in prison.
During his last time behind bars, Ferrer’s relatives have reported the most diverse torture against the opponent, ranging from beatings, isolation and the refusal to make phone calls or allow family visits. They have also threatened to revoke the 17 years that, according to the authorities, he owes them for his sentence imposed during the Black Spring. In a letter that Ferrer managed to make public last year, he assured that the Cuban Government had him “buried alive.” He said he suffered from severe headaches, ringing in his ears, mouth bleeding, cramps and loss of vision. “I find myself in the most extreme isolation known in the Western Hemisphere in the 21st century,” he said.
At the moment it is unknown what Ferrer will do from now on, but although many think that exile is a possibility for many of those released, this has been a proposal that Ferrer has always rejected.
