Guillermo Fariñas in center of photo with crutch.
Guillermo Fariñas, targeted by State Security
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats, June 3, 2015 — No “disinterested” person would say that the encounter by José Alberto Botell, the aggressor, with Guillermo Fariñas and his companions was casual, of a personal nature, or even an ordinary attempted mugging.
On the contrary, we know that the government is committed to eliminating its opponents. It is obvious that the attack was thought out, planned, and strategically arranged.
The perpetrator must have been extorted, as State Security commonly does, to induce him to commit such a crime. They must have promised him that they would forget some other crime that he had committed, maybe a worse one, if he carried out the order to kill Fariñas, and even then maybe he didn’t fully comply out of fear of being sacrificed later.
The attacker’s life is now in as much danger as Fariñas’s, because they don’t leave loose ends, witnesses who could some day be their own accusers. But they sent the “convict” to a camp or settlement, and he will not serve even half of his sentence; they maintain him with privileges and facilities far different than those of real prisoners.
Meanwhile, State Security will continue studying another strategy for killing Fariñas. Remember that they committed other assassination attempts against Oswaldo Payá before the “accident” that killed him.
There are pictures taken a week before the fateful day showing the condition of his minivan after a State truck hit it, purposely dragging him along an avenue, but without managing to accomplish the task of eliminating the opposition leader, and without concern that his family was inside the vehicle.
Despite the tremendous media fiasco resulting from the failed attempt to assassinate Guillermo Fariñas, the government has shown that it is resolved to get rid of its political opponents.
The Castro Regime Misogyny
On Sunday May 31, they again violently repressed the Ladies in White. Every day the dictatorship is busy letting the opposition know that it is willing to continue governing the country as if it were its private property, even if to accomplish this it has to murder, savagely beat, arrest, and falsely accuse those who try to prevent it.
Lady-in-White Yaqueline Bonne—who recently claimed that State Security proposed that she become an undercover agent in exchange for relaxed prison conditions for her son Yasser—has been physically punished, as if it were not enough that they sent her son from a settlement to a camp with harsher conditions.
The Cuban governors joke with increasing cynicism about talks with the United States and the European Union. Wishful thinking of improvements in human rights will die of heartbreak.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats, June 3, 2015
Border Prison Unit, Havana
