14ymedio, Havana, 20 September 2023 — The brothers Nadir and Jorge Martín Perdomo, sentenced to six and eight years in prison after the anti-government protests of 11 July 2021 in San José de las Lajas (province of Mayabeque), received a pass this Tuesday after spending 794 days without leaving prison. Activist Betty Guerra Perdomo, cousin of the inmates, reported that they will be released for four days.
Guerra shared a message of support for the brothers on the social network X (Twitter), celebrating their brief release, along with an image of them in a vehicle with their mother, Martha Perdomo. “I don’t know how they can have those clean looks, those noble smiles and that high forehead that only the innocent can wear,” she wrote, assuring that Nadir and Jorge – arrested on July 17 – had gone out to demonstrate out of their “pure and sacred desire for freedom.”
She also alluded to the regime’s “darkness dressed as a homeland,” which she accused of “staining two authentic Cubans.” In addition, she demanded the permanent freedom of both brothers and the other political prisoners on the Island.
In April 2022, Nadir and Jorge’s lawyer, Reynel Brito, filed an appeal of the sentence before the Provincial Court of Mayabeque. After the appeal was dismissed, Brito criticized that the authorities behaved in a “severe” manner and without considering the “adequate records of prior conduct” presented by the defendants.
After the appeal was dismissed, Brito criticized that the authorities behaved in a “severe” manner
On February 8 of that same year, the brothers had been convicted of “attack, contempt and public disorder,” and sentenced to a number of years in prison that exceeded what the Prosecutor’s Office requested in both cases. For the Perdomo family, the sentence was an “aberration.”
Guerra then told 14ymedio that she considered the trial “a totally absurd, disrespectful and humiliating play… Everything that has happened with my cousins’ case from the beginning is an aberration up to this moment, I don’t want to say that it is the end because I cling to the hope that with strength and struggle we can change it.”
The sentence also highlighted that Jorge and Nadir decided to “circumvent” the health measures imposed by the Ministry of Public Health during the Covid-19 pandemic to join an “agglomeration of people” on 54th Street in San José de las Lajas.
According to the document, many others joined that march “at the call of the accused” and “holding pans, metal objects and the horns of motorcycles created enormous noises, which put the neighbors on alert” beginning the behaviors of “total disrespect,” such as chanting “with euphoria” “prosperous and vulgar” words such as “pinga [dick] police” and “Díaz-Canel singao [motherfucker]”, along with “Homeland and Life,” in addition to making “crude demands to the protective commissioners of the place” and snatching a Cuban flag for a moment from an agent who was participating in a government counter-demonstration.
After the trial, the brothers were held in different prisons: Nadir in Melena del Sur and Jorge in Quivicán
After the trial, the brothers were held in different prisons: Nadir in Melena del Sur and Jorge in Quivicán, each more than 30 kilometers from their home, which affected family visits.
“They separated my children from me telling a lie as huge as that Nadir had asked to be separated from his brother. I am going to complain to the head of the prisons to ask that they be together again because the economic situation is difficult and it is not easy to pay for cars to two different places,” the mother of the young men then denounced.
Since that moment, both Marta Perdomo and the rest of the family have carried out an incessant campaign for the release of her sons.
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