MADRID 28 Nov. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba (CTDC) has presented a habeas corpus procedure to request the “immediate” release of the Cuban opponent and leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), José Daniel Ferrer.
The civil platform has indicated in a statement sent to Europa Press that this demand “is not only moral, humanitarian” and is “in line with Human Rights”, but is also “fundamentally technical”, since his sentence expired last year. August 13, which is why he is in “illegal deprivation of liberty.”
“The last beating recently suffered by Ferrer García is a dangerous sign of how far inhumane behavior can go in Cuba’s prisons and an opportunity for reflection on the entire Cuban prison system – the prisoners are human beings with dignity. intrinsic– as well as the legal system,” the platform added.
The habeas corpus procedure, presented by the opposition Manuel Cuesta Morúa before the criminal chamber of the Supreme People’s Court of Cuba, alleges that “the sanction of four years and six months of deprivation of liberty” imposed has been extinguished.
Under the Criminal Procedure Law, “any person who is deprived of liberty outside of the cases or without the formalities and guarantees provided for” by both the Constitution and the aforementioned legislation “must be released at his or her request or by any person in his name through a very summary habeas corpus procedure before the competent courts”.
The text also alleges that the Third Criminal Chamber of the Popular Provincial Court of Santiago de Cuba “took February 26, 2021 as the date on which it began to comply”, without “paying for the purposes of compliance with it all the time that he remained subject to the precautionary measure of provisional detention”.
Likewise, the procedure emphasizes that police agents “without complying with legal formalities” detained the opponent on October 1, 2019 “without previously showing at least an arrest warrant”, thus violating “the procedural guarantee provided for in article 241 of the aforementioned Criminal Procedure Law”.
This comes after his sister, Ana Belkis Ferrer, reported over the weekend that people close to the family had seen the opponent “very thin, brutally beaten and with a wound on his face” in the prison hospital. Sweet potato, in Santiago de Cuba.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) expressed concern on Monday “in the face of reports of physical violence” by the Cuban prison authorities and recalled that Ferrer is a “beneficiary of precautionary measures” granted by the organization.
Ferrer, imprisoned since 2019, is one of the best-known faces of the Cuban opposition. He was previously arrested during the so-called Black Spring of 2003 for participating in the Varela Project, devised by Oswaldo Payá to achieve legal changes through popular initiative that would foster a political opening in Cuba, and sentenced to 25 years in prison.
The head of UNPACU was the last of the 75 detainees at that time to be released. The majority agreed to leave Cuba, for the United States or Europe, in exchange for their release, thanks to the mediation of the Catholic Church and the Spanish Government. Twelve, including Ferrer, refused to accept what they considered forced exile, so their release from prison came later, in their case in 2011.