EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, 1 Februday 2017 — The global organization Amnesty International on Tuesday called for the “immediate and unconditional” release of Cuban dissident Eduardo Cardet, who has been detained for two months accused of the crime of assault.
Amnesty International believes that Cardet, the national coordinator of the illegal Christian Liberation Movement (MCL), is a prisoner of conscience who is imprisoned “solely for the peaceful exercise of his right to freedom of expression,” according to a statement EFE had access to.
He also says that Cardet was violently arrested when he returned from visiting his mother on November 30, five days after Fidel Castro’s death, and since then has been held in a prison in the eastern province of Holguin.
Cardet, according to his wife, Yaimaris Vecino, cited by Amnesty International, is accused of attacking an agent of the authority, so that the prosecution could seek a three-year prison sentence.
In the middle of this month, Amnesty International also called for the release of Cuban dissident graffiti artist Danilo Maldonado, known as El Sexto (The Sixth), also considered a prisoner of conscience who was imprisoned without trial in the high security Combinado del Este in Havana.
El Sexto was released without charge on January 21 after spending nearly two months in prison for having written the phrase “He’s gone” on a wall of the Habana Libre hotel in the capital on November 26, 2016, after the death of Fidel Castro.
