The relevant judicial authorities now have a legal deadline of 72 hours to issue a response, Cubalex reports.
EFE (via 14ymedio), Havana, July 14, 2026 / The legal advice center Cubalex reported that it was able to formally deliver in Havana the habeas corpus petition in favor of the artist and political prisoner Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who as of Tuesday remains at large, after being transferred from prison two days before his five-year sentence expired on July 9.
“The relevant judicial authorities now have a legal deadline of 72 hours to issue a response,” the organization stated on social media, having denounced the previous day the impediments to delivering the appeal “because the Havana Provincial People’s Court, the competent body to hear the request, as well as the Supreme People’s Court, remained closed this Monday despite it being a working day.”
Cubalex explained that “this legal action is presented in a critical scenario of lack of protection,” since “on July 9, the five-year sentence that the artist was serving in the Guanajay prison, since 2021, officially expired.”
On July 9th, the five-year sentence that the artist was serving in Guanajay prison, since 2021, officially expired.
It also denounced that “despite this, on July 7 he was taken from prison by military and State Security forces to an unknown location, and since then there has been no official information about his whereabouts.”
“From Cubalex we demand that due process and the physical integrity of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara be respected,” the report said.
The first contact with Otero Alcántara, after it became known that he was taken from the Guanajay prison, was reported on July 9 by the curator Anamely Ramos, who said on social networks that the artist was “well,” after having communicated with her from “a mobile phone of the State Security of Cuba”.
Ramos indicated in her publication that the State Security agents “wanted to know how the process of the requested conditional release is going” so that Otero Alcántara can travel to the United States and explained that “Luis Manuel’s conditional release is still in process.”
State Security agents “wanted to know how the process of the requested parole is going” so that Otero Alcántara can travel to the United States
In this respect, the NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized last week that this appears to be “a release conditioned on exile.”
Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, 38, considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, was imprisoned for five years in the Guanajay prison from where he had denounced multiple abuses on several occasions.
The leader of the San Isidro movement was arrested on July 11, 2021, when he tried to join the massive anti-government protests of that day, the largest in decades in Cuba.
Amnesty International has been demanding since last week the “immediate and unconditional release” of the artist.
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