The United States on Tuesday condemned the alleged attack by prison officials against Cuban dissident José Daniel Ferrer, imprisoned after trying to join the anti-government protests on July 11, 2021.
“Alarmed by reports that prison officials beat Cuban political prisoner José Daniel Ferrer during a family visit,” Brian Nichols, the State Department’s undersecretary for Latin America, said on social media.
In the same message, Nichols underlined the call of the president of the United States, Joe Biden, “for the release of all political prisoners in Cuba.”
The official attached a statement from the US president last Friday in which he urged “the release of the hundreds of political prisoners who are still detained in Cuba after the protests of July 11, 2021.”
“The United States accompanies the Cuban people in demanding their human rights and the right to influence the future of Cuba,” Biden declared at the time.
The Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba (CTDC) denounced on Sunday that the leader of the illegal Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu) “was beaten in the presence of his children and his wife during a family visit” in the Mar Verde prison (Santiago de Cuba, east) on December 9.
Ferrer was arrested on October 1, 2019 and in February 2020 sentenced to prison after a closed-door trial for an alleged crime of injuring another man, a charge that his family and collaborators deny.
After six months in jail, and amid strong international pressure, in April 2020 his sentence was commuted to a sentence of four and a half years of house arrest.
More than a year later, the dissident was jailed again for joining the 9/11 protests.
The Cuban Justice revoked in August of last year the benefit of home detention of the well-known dissident and sentenced him to remain in prison for the remaining years of his sentence for an alleged assault.