Alexander Fábregas Milanés, who served a sentence for his involvement in the protests of July 11, is once again facing harassment from the Cuban regime and will be tried for propaganda against the constitutional order after being held incommunicado for 11 days at the State Security (SE) headquarters in Santa Clara.
Marian Prieto Rodríguez, his wife, shared on Facebook that Fábregas had to travel to Sancti Spíritus, but upon his return, he was arrested by the SE in Santa Clara.
Furthermore, she confirmed that her husband will be put on trial: “They are going to prosecute him for propaganda against the constitutional order. They wouldn’t tell me the name of the prosecutor, and they didn’t mention anything else. They refused to give me more information... Only to threaten me,” she said about a conversation she had with a political police officer, according to what she told Martí Noticias.
"Yesterday I went out to see if I could visit him, but I wasn't allowed to. I asked for his cell phone, and they told me no, that the phone was confiscated. They locked me in a room with very cold air conditioning for quite a while. Then an officer came in and threatened me, saying that if I continued to report and publish on social media, I would be accused of the same crime," said the wife of the former prisoner, reporting that she also receives constant threats from State Security.
Prieto expressed her distrust in the Cuban judicial system, stating that her husband has a lawyer, but, "It's all in vain; everyone here works for the government."
Fábregas, 34 years old, served a 9-month prison sentence for the crime of public disorder, an accusation the regime used to justify his conviction due to a live broadcast he conducted on Facebook during the protests of July 11 in the city of Sancti Spíritus.
According to Martí Noticias, since being released from prison, he has received threats from the SE due to the posts he makes on social media.
Last Sunday, the opposition figures José Antonio Pompa López and Lázaro Mendoza García were sent to prison after spending months detained at Villa Marista, the headquarters of the SE in Havana, charged with the offense of "propaganda against the constitutional order."
The Provincial Prosecutor's Office of Havana has imposed a provisional detention measure on both dissidents, reported Martí Noticias, based on testimonies from the family members of the detainees.
In the past, the crime of "propaganda against the constitutional order," outlined in the latest Penal Code, was repudiated by some legal scholars.
In Article 124, it states that those individuals will be charged who:
a) incite against the social order, international solidarity, or the socialist state recognized in the Constitution of the Republic, through oral or written propaganda or in any other form.
b) prepare, distribute, or possess propaganda of the aforementioned nature.
The crime of propaganda against the constitutional order, established in the Cuban Penal Code approved in May 2022, carries sentences ranging from 3 to 10 years in prison.
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