Leidy Laura Hernandez Denounces that Cuban State Security Poisoned Her Dogs

Leidy Laura Hernández, with one of her animals. (Facebook)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Luz Escobar, Havana, 4 February 2021 — Leidy Laura Hernández, Santa Clara animal protector, and her husband, the rebellious rapper Omar Mena El Analista, denounced this Wednesday that Cuban State Security poisoned their dogs.

“On Sunday morning, when I got up and went to give the dogs breakfast, I found María, one of my dogs, was dead,” Hernández tells 14ymedio, sure of what happened: “They poisoned her, it seems like it was at night. “

The other dog in the pair, Sonrisa, was also found convulsing, but they managed to save her.

Her hypothesis is based on the increasing harassment that the couple has suffered from State Security. Since the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara called a demonstration before the Capitol last week, Mena has been detained on several occasions and the surveillance of their home has been constant.

“In recent days they have become much more raw and threatened me from various sides,” says Hernández. “On Facebook I received many threats from fake profiles, which I never thought would happen.”

As soon as they noticed María’s condition, they went looking for a veterinarian to do an autopsy, although Hernández is convinced of the cause of the animal’s death. “She was a super healthy dog that had never been sick and had nothing, there was no other cause for her to wake up dead.”

The veterinarian later determined that the cause of death had been “intoxication,” at the same time he ventured that they could have used insecticide “the one they use for the mosquito campaign,” the activist told this newspaper.

The young woman says that in the neighborhood she is lucky that all the neighbors, in addition to getting along very well with her and her husband, always help them. “They all like animals and they support us in what we do in the shelter, they come and deworm their dogs here, they sterilize them, we help them with that part and they help us with food, they have always been there for us,” she says.

In addition, she insists that her neighbors, who have been “witnesses to the entire siege of the State Security against us,” when this happened, believed that it could only be the political police who were acting like this “to pressure us.”

“I do think it was them,” she insists. “Everything has been a chain of events, one after another, of threats that have increased in tone, first against us, then against veterinarians, then against our friends, our neighbors… That has had no effect and they have accomplished nothing, then they come with this baseness. “

She believes that “now the political issue is very complex and they are very afraid,” referring to the Government. The agents, she says, know that hhers “weak point” is that, her dogs: “They know that this is a way of making me feel bad.”

Also, remember that this is not the first time that State Security has done “something like this” against activists and people who express themselves differently: “They did it to David D Omni, whose dog was poisoned, and to Omara Ruiz Urquiola. Now it was our turn.”

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