CUBALEX, 3 April 2020: The Cuban opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer, coordinator of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) has been given his freedom along with three other activists who had also been jailed.
Ferrer was locked up October 1st, 2019, and was tried last February 26th, along with the other members of the opposition, Roilán Zárraga Ferrer, José Pupo Chaveco and Fernando González Vaillant.
According to his brother, Luis Enrique Ferrer, UNPACU external representative, his prison sentence of four and a half years was replaced by house arrest.
The opposition leader spent 6 months in prison, following a highly irregular process, in which the Cuban regime violated its own laws.
March 12th was the date when the Tribunal should have passed sentence on the four members of the opposition. Nevertheless, in contravention of existing laws, the verdict was never made public. During the trial, the Attorney General ratified the recommendation for nine years for the UNPACU leader and seven and eight years for the other activists.
According to statements by Julio Ferrer Tamayo, a lawyer from the independent Cubalex Center for Legal Information, the judges charged with dispensing “justice” in the Ferrer case should be subject to disciplinary proceedings for failure to comply with the date set down for notification of sentence, in accordance with Art. 31 of the Law of Penal Procedure.
A wide international media campaign was mounted to urge the Castro regime to set free the UNPACU coordinator, along with the rest of the political prisoners.
UNPACU also publicised their concern over the condition of their principal leader, and for those Cubans in jail for peaceful political activism. The opposition group demanded the immediate freeing of all political detentions which were part of the extraordinary measures taken by the Cuban regime within the the state of emergency in force throughout the country.
Translated by GH
