The director of Coexistence Studies Center (CEC), Dagoberto Valdés Hernández, denounced this Tuesday the harassment of the State Security (SE) of the Cuban regime against its organization.
According to a statement signed by the Cuban intellectual and published by the CEC in Facebook, on the night of April 30, at the entrance to the Pinar del Río highway, the political police and several agents of the regime intercepted the car where Valdés was traveling with Yoandy Izquiero.
The academic pointed out that all the car's crew members had their documents removed and were taken to a police station, under the pretext of a review of their identity papers.
According to the complaint, they interrogated the driver who took them to Havana and questioned him about the reasons for the trip and the places they frequented.
Furthermore, the publication points out that the political police informed Valdés that they had detained them because “They wanted to clarify some information and could not wait for the appointment”, alluding to a meeting that the intellectual would hold on May 1st.
“The lieutenant colonel asked if he knew Ibrahim Bosch, president of the Republican Party of Cuba, based in Miami. According to the officer, Bosch is a notorious terrorist who has called for violent acts within Cuba during the May Day celebrations and who had said that they had Dagoberto in Pinar del Río," the statement detailed.
Valdés denied knowing that person, stating that “for its religious principles and throughout the story of his life, he is absolutely against not only terrorism, but from the slightest act of violence.”
The officers found a series of “coincidences” very suspicious: Bosch's summons, the trip to Havana just before the first of May, in addition to Monday's column that dealt with Workers' Day, pointed out the CEC's complaint.
Then, the regime's police made it very clear that "arresting us on the highway at night and taking us to a police station does not correspond to the objective of the interrogation for which I was already summoned."
Finally, according to the statement, that night Izquiero was sitting alone on a bench, in the living room, separated from the driver and unable to speak to each other, and when they finished with Valdés they returned their identification documents and cell phones and let them continue the journey. journey.
According to the news portal Cuba DNAPreviously, the director of the CEC reported receiving a phone call from Major Ernesto, from the regime's SE, and that he was summoned “for tomorrow, May 1, 2024 at 8 a.m. at the Immigration Offices in Pinar del Río.”
Due to his political opposition to the Cuban authoritarian regime and his intellectual and social work, Dagoberto Valdés, resident in the western city of Pinar del Río, constantly suffers harassment from the SE, with arbitrary arrests and official marginalization, the news site noted.
As part of this harassment by the regime, the Catholic activist has previously been questioned by the political police.
In 2023, for example, Valdés was summoned by the SE of Pinar del Río for interrogation.
"They told me that it was an official warning because the Danish journalist Øjvind Kyrø, who interviewed me more than 15 years ago in Vitral, and who stopped by my house two months ago, was organizing sessions with 16 people to learn more. of Cuba," the activist explained after leaving the police station.
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