The journalist was sentenced this Tuesday to two years in prison for the crime of “minor injuries”
14ymedio, Havana, 25 September 2024 — This Tuesday the Municipal Court of Niceto Pérez, in Guantánamo, sentenced the independent reporter Yeris Curbelo Aguilera to two years in prison for the crime of “minor injuries.” According to the Center for a Free Cuba, which reported the sentence, the case was orchestrated by State Security in retaliation for his political activism.
In a summary of Curbelo’s version published by the organization, the reporter says that on April 14 four individuals – all 21 years old, whom he identifies as Miguel Mosqueda, Douglas Ismark Mazar Góngora and Mariano Reyes – assaulted his 16-year-old son Jessy. According to Curbelo, the authorities only fined the aggressors, despite the fact that the teenager ended up in the Guantánamo pediatric hospital with several injuries.
Months later, on June 16, the four attackers, plus another identified as Adrián Fuentes, assaulted Curbelo himself in the same place where the beating of his son had occurred. Fuentes, 41 years old, even gripped a machete, which, the reporter says, caused injuries to his right hand.
Curbelo sees in both episodes the hand of State Security, because when the police arrived at the scene and stopped the fight, they led him alone to the Guantánamo station, from where he left on bail two days later, accused of causing “minor injuries” to the others.
Curbelo believes that they want to fabricate a common crime to punish his work of activism and for having spread the protests in the Guantánamo town of Caimanera
The Center for a Free Cuba also interviewed Curbelo’s wife, Odalis Legrá, who says that this Tuesday’s trial was “rigged.” For two hours, she said, the journalist’s lawyer claimed that it was Curbelo who had suffered injuries and that the sentence was a contradiction. “In the trial there was no talk of any of that,” explained Legrá, who also narrated how in the middle of the deliberation a State Security agent entered the premises where the sentence was discussed.
Upon returning, Curbelo was convicted according to the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, but Fuentes – judged in the same process – was acquitted. The other aggressors were taken away as witnesses.
The hypothesis that the attack was orchestrated by the political police has been repeated on several occasions by Curbelo, who believes that they want to fabricate “a common crime” to punish his work of activism and for having denounced, after the protests in the town of Caimanera in 2023, the situation of several prisoners.
The journalist was intimidated by State Security while trying to report the protests
When the demonstrators were tried last May, in the same court where Curbelo was sentenced on Tuesday, the journalist was intimidated by State Security while trying to report the protests. The agents asked him to withdraw immediately, but he had time to spread – through an audio – a brief chronicle of the trial. At that time, according to his complaint, he was also assaulted by the police.
“It is a really immoral and arbitrary condemnation as is the situation suffered by Yeris and his family. It is good to remember that Yeris Curbelo Aguilera has carried out outstanding activism and has a remarkable leadership in his community, the town of Caimanera, a place complicated by the presence of the Guantánamo Naval Base,” said Legrá on Tuesday. She says her husband “has suffered political imprisonment several times, and their son has been psychologically affected and has had to receive psychological treatment from professionals.”
Curbelo collaborates with Palenque Visión, an “independent audiovisual agency” founded in 2012 in the eastern provinces of the Island.
Translated by Regina Anavy
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