The regime revoked the release of a 11J prisoner for refusing to collaborate with the political police.
He explained that 33 minors remain on the list, of whom 29 are serving sentences. / EFE
14ymedio, Havana, 10 April 2025 — Prisoners Defenders (PD) denounced this Thursday that the Cuban regime revoked the release of one of the 230 prisoners released after its promise to the Vatican in January to grant “gradual release with prison benefits” to 553 inmates, a process that has now been completed.
This prisoner who was re-imprisoned is Jaime Rodríguez, imprisoned during the protests of July 11, 2021. On January 18, he was released and “not even a month later”—according to Javier Larrondo, president of the PD—imprisoned once again “for refusing to collaborate as an undercover agent for State Security.”
The remaining 230, Larrondo explains, “are under house arrest, their sentences are intact, and many of them are under extremely serious restrictions on their fundamental freedoms of movement and forced labor.”
In the island’s prisons, the PD recorded 1,152 political prisoners in Cuba this March, with two more added to its registry compared to the previous month. Eight people were added to its monthly list, and another six were released after fully serving their sentence or measure.
“They are under house arrest, their sentences are intact, and they are under extremely serious conditions.”
Three of them were arrested in Villa Clara and convicted of the “increasingly common type of propaganda against the constitutional order.” Hunger, thirst, and other conditions in Cuban prisons are, PD insists, “forms of torture” for the 90,000 prisoners who remain behind bars for various crimes.
Several political prisoners have “highly worrying” health conditions, such as Yoruba priest Loreto Hernández, 53, who suffers from ischemic heart disease and hypertension, among other illnesses aggravated by malnutrition. Also mentioned are Alexander Díaz, who suffers from throat cancer and, like Hernández, is being denied parole by the regime.
Another case is that of journalist Jorge Bello, who suffers from “multiple health problems: diabetes and inflammation of the testicles.” Bello suffered a heart attack in January. Amalio Álvarez, who suffers from a psychiatric disorder and cognitive impairments—in addition to several suicide attempts—is also ineligible for release, Larrondo said.
PD maintains the 230 individuals already on its list, as their sentences have not expired. These individuals were released after Washington removed Havana from its list of countries that sponsor terrorism.
The Cuban government, which never publicly linked the list and the releases, announced two months later that it had successfully concluded the process. The move was described as a “fraud” by PD and criticized by several human rights NGOs, including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Justice 11J, Cubalex, and the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights.
The monthly PD report identified 473 people with “serious medical conditions.”
The PD’s monthly report identified 473 people (41% of its records) with “serious medical conditions” and 40 with mental health problems, all of them “without adequate medical or psychiatric treatment.”
It explained that 33 minors remain on the list, of whom 29 are serving sentences and four are being prosecuted “with precautionary measures without any judicial protection.” The minimum age for criminal prosecution in Cuba is 16.
PD reported that its registry includes 222 people accused of sedition, when in most cases they participated in peaceful protests, adding that all of them “have already been sentenced to an average of ten years of imprisonment each” (including 15 minors). The NGO also highlighted the treatment suffered by the 121 women on its list.
Since July 2021, when the largest anti-government protests in decades took place on the island, a total of 1,821 people have been imprisoned for political reasons.
Larrondo also had a few words of solidarity for Venezuelans, who are subjected to a regime allied with Havana, and where the situation of political prisoners is similar. A total of 896 people remained deprived of their liberty in Venezuela as of last Monday, and according to the NGO Foro Penal as political prisoners, the organization reported Thursday on X.
The organization indicated that of the total detainees, 808 are men and 88 are women, including 891 adults and five adolescents between the ages of 14 and 17. Most were arrested after last July’s elections in Venezuela, in which the electoral body declared Nicolás Maduro’s victory despite accusations of “fraud” from the majority opposition.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, more than 2,400 people were arrested—of whom 2,006 have been released—for causing “violence” during the post-election protests. Both Maduro and Attorney General Tarek William Saab maintain that there are no political prisoners in the country, a position also upheld by Havana.
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