14ymedio Faces of 2018: Eduardo Cardet, Political Prisoner

The opposition’s Eduardo Cardet is still in prison after the sentence of three years which was imposed on him. (Captura YouTube/MCL)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 24 December 2018 — In November Eduardo Cardet marked two years in prison. The leader of the Christian Liberation Movement (MCL) was arrested November 30, 2016 at the door of his home, in Holguín, and later was sentenced to three years of prison for the crime of attacking authority, in a trial that his family and other activists label “manipulated.”

Born in 1968 and with a degree in Medicine, the activist was chosen as the national coordinator of MCL after the death of Oswaldo Payá in 2012.

In October of this year the dissident was awarded the Patmos prize which has been granted by the institution of the same name for the past five years to committed Cuban Christians. A few weeks later he won the Pedro Luis Boitel 2018 Freedom Prize in a ceremony held in Miami.

In recent months Cardet has seen his conditions in prison worsen. In May his family members were informed by authorities that the opposition figure had been prohibited from receiving visitors for “spreading fake news” about his case.

At the end of July, MCL asked the Minister of Foreign Affairs of France, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to intercede on behalf of Cardet during his visit to Havana, but so far, the petitions of human rights organizations, national and international, and political parties have fallen into a black hole.

The NGO UN Watch presented a complaint to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to demand that the island’s authorities free Cardet. The organization’s lawyers registered the case against the Cuban State on July 23 in front of this body of the UN made up of five jurists and experts in human rights.

See also: 14ymedio Faces of 2018

Translated by: Sheilagh Carey

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