Translator’s note: This blog post does NOT relate to Angel’s most recent arrest this week. It relates to a series of criminal charges the regime fabricated against him in order to be able to imprison him as a “criminal” rather than as a “political prisoner/prisoner of conscience” for his writings.
After the “Cuban government” made me suffer, for more than three years, its new injustice, to the point that, accusation after accusation, the “Prosecutor” asked for 54 years in prison, and then decided not to continue adding more charges such as, “Attempting,” “Threatening,” “Running over a child with my car and hit and run,” and “Harassment,” among the most absurd and improbably like any of those mentioned, and, shamefully and looking for credibility, joined causes for a final request of 15 years in prison against my person.
And in the process the file was passed off from the “Provincial Court” to the Picota police station to continue the investigation or to invent false proof, considering they didn’t have the slightest evidence against me, and even after the “Court” again received it and sent it to the “Provincial Prosecutor” for the same reason, and they in turn sent it to the “Attorney General of the Republic” and later to the headquarters of “State Security” in Villa Marista, according to the inquiries of my attorney at each step.
In recent days, finally, the “Court,” for the umpteenth time, returned to file to the “Provincial Prosecutor” to continue fabricating charges, which, in the worlds of my attorney, “is a great sausage without legs or head without rhyme or reason and a complete caprice,” and now they have been left with no choice but to withdraw the majority of the accusations, in fact the most serious — attempted murder, forceful robbery, rape, threats, injury — among others, and only keep the accusations of “trespassing” and “injuries.”
All of course without a shred of evidence, but evidently they considered it too exaggerated to remove them all at once.
Now the “Provincial Court” should be alerted that these charges were dropped, why do they keep the others being minor and lacking any evidence or witnesses to support them? Why some yes and others no? Who decided what charges are true or false if all are based on someone making accusations without any evidence and having declared that State Security has manipulated them?
Is it pure chance that after opening this blog I became the most dangerous and feared criminal citizen in Havana?!
Based on these facts it seems that yes, after mounting the police machinery against me, which write in the same file, and where I am portrayed in a note that warns: “of urgent interest of the Minister,” they have had to give up, at least the major charges, those that call for ten years in prison.
I am not naive; I recognize that the only thing they are seeking is that I surrender and close my blog, but I think they realized that the more unjust they are with me, the more they inject strength in my will. And if they are preparing the ground for a small sentence to make an example of me, I will reject it the same drive and determination as ever.
When my lawyer informed me he thought the news would make me jump for joy. I remained impassive, because, repeating the words that I know: “Those 54 years offend me and equally so does a five peso fine. To me it means the same thing. The offense is the same. It is an affront to justice.”
It seems that “government” now does not know how to get out of it without demonstrating that they were wrong, they built a castle in the air, and, like everything that rises, it falls by its own weight, and my case threatens to drop on their heads.
I can only hope that the fate of this fraudulent ship, which like a wounded beast, is giving its last gasps and kicks. My fate, that of justice, is the safe harbor: the ultimate FREEDOM for the people of CUBA.
Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
October 21 2012