Denis Solis Transferred to Combinado del Este, Cuba’s Largest Prison

Guards and prisoners in the Combinado del Este prison, in Havana, Cuba, during a visit made by the national and foreign press accredited to the island. (EFE)

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Havana, 8 December 2020 — The Cuban rapper Denis Solis González, whose sentence to eight months in prison lit the fuse of the protests of the San Isidro Movement in recent weeks, has been transferred from the Valle Grande prison in Havana to the Combinado del Este Penitentiary Center, according to Vladimir González Scull, the activist’s uncle, speaking to Cubanet.

The family does not know when the transfer occurred and admits that the news has been an unpleasant surprise, since Combinado del Este is a maximum security prison and Solís is serving a sentence for a crime of contempt. However, he is not the only prisoner of conscience in the same situation.

The journalist Héctor Luis Valdés has denounced the situation through his social networks, pointing out that the high security center should house criminals convicted of serious crimes such as murders, rapes, drug trafficking or embezzlement, and serving penalties that exceed eight years of deprivation of freedom.

“The Ministry of Justice, in complicity with the Ministry of the Interior, circumvented any code of ethics when carrying out this sanction. Now they commit another arbitrariness and another breach,” laments Valdés, who adds that, in any case, according to the law Solís’s sentence should be “served in Valle Grande and from there he should go to a forced labor camp.”

Denis Solís, a member of the San Isidro Movement, was arrested on November 9 on the street. From there, he was transferred to the Vivac de Calabazar and later to Valle Grande, where his communications have been very limited, something that his colleagues attribute to an attempt to limit the support he is receiving from abroad and which has led to a protest movement unusual in Cuba.

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