They raise funds for legal help for a young 9/11 protester detained in the Bahamas

Cuban activists have started a fundraising campaign to help with the legal expenses of Marco Antonio Alfonso Breto,a 21-year-old 9/11 protester who escaped from Cuba in March and is currently detained in a prison in the Bahamas.

“The young Marco Antonio Alfonso Breto needs our help. Marco Antonio is one of the young people from the La Güinera neighborhood, who took to the streets on July 12, 2021 and is currently detained in The Bahamas, after trying to emigrate by sea to the United States. We need to pay a lawyer to get him out of there and access justice. Thanks in advance",reads the GoFundMe campaign driven by activist Salomé García Bacallao.

So far, the campaign has managed to raise about $850 of the $5,000 needed.

Alfonso Breto was one of the young people who protested on June 11 in La Güinera, Havana, for which he was sentenced to five years of correctional work with internment.

In November 2022, he was temporarily released and escaped, his mother, María Isabel Breto Fleitas, toldMartí News.

At 19 years old, the young Cuban spent about four months hiding from the authorities, until he managed to board a ship bound for the United States.

However, for reasons unknown to their mother, the rafters were abandoned in the Bahamas.

Initially, Alfonso Breto was in a migrant detention center in the Bahamas, but upon learning that he would be deported to Cuba, he decided to escape.

For about a month, he lived in hiding, sleeping anywhere he could find; but immigration officers found him and arrested him again on the night of May 24.

María Isabel Breto reported that, during her last arrest, her son was brutally beaten, which caused seizures due to his epilepsy condition. At the beginning of June, he was transferred to Nassau prison and his mother found out about this through a call that the young man managed to make to his aunt when he was imprisoned again.

The woman hopes that her son can obtain political asylum in a democratic country and avoid deportation to Cuba, as she fears the reprisals he could face if he falls into the hands of the regime authorities again.