14ymedio, Havana, 28 May 2022 — At least five young people who were tried for the July 11 protests in Havana were released after a appeals trial held this Friday at the Diez de Octubre Municipal Court in Havana. Among those released are Rowland Jesús Castillo and Lázaro Noel Urgellés Fajardo, who had been sentenced to 18 and 14 years in prison.
Also released were Kendry Miranda Cárdenas, sentenced to 19 years in prison and Brandon David Becerra Curbelo, who received a 13-year prison sentence. All of them participated in the protest in the vicinity of the Toyo corner in the Havana municipality of Diez de Octubre.
From that group, Lauren Martínez Ibáñez, 18, who had been sentenced to the same amount of time in prison, was also released.
Activist Salomé García Bacallao detailed in a Facebook post that both Becerra Curbelo and Urgellés Fajardo had their pre-trial measure changed from being interned in a penitentiary center to serving house arrest, while Castillo Castro and Miranda Cárdenas will have to spend the rest of their sentences in a labor camp.
When announcing the appeal trial this Friday, the Justicia 11J platform alerted that the modifications “are not final sentences as long as a document has not been issued that closes the criminal process.” It also insisted that “the releases related to possible modifications of non-custodial sentences are not definitive, but only temporary.”
The platform reported that five young protesters from La Güinera were also released, due to a change in sanction after an appeal trial, although “the sentences have not yet been issued.” They are Eloy Bárbaro Cardoso Pedroso and Juan Yanier Antomarchi Nuñez, both 18 years old and both sentenced to 8 years in prison.
Added to the list are Dariel Cruz García, 20 years old and sentenced to 8 years; Yurileidys Soler Abad, 20, with an initial sentence of 15 years in prison; and Liliana Oropesa Ferrer, also 20 years old, with a sentence of 9 years in prison.
Justicia 11J expressed its concern about the lack of knowledge of “what will be the final sanctions that must be complied with” by the young people who have been released in recent days. Among them are also Andy García Lorenzo and four more demonstrators from Villa Clara and another five in Havana, including Jonathan Torres Farrat and Eloy Bárbaro Cardoso.
Regarding the actions of the regime with the latest releases, the platform insisted that “false expectations not be spread within civil society and families that give rise to the consolidation of a benevolent image of the State” in relation to the release of the 11J demonstrators, since these decisions do not point “to the achievement of massive changes in sanctions or mass releases.”
“Even less is there a shift towards the granting of dismissals and acquittals, the only valid ways to solve the irreparable damage to the Cuban people by the State, which has not yet taken criminal or administrative measures against the repressive forces, which caused the confrontations in the protests,” it insisted.
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