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The Supreme Court of Cuba dismissed yesterday the appeal for cassation filed in favor of the artist and political prisoner Fernando Almenares Rivera, known as Nando OBDC, and firmly upheld his five-year prison sentence for the charge of propaganda against the constitutional order, as reported by the media Martí Noticias.
The decision was communicated to the family on Tuesday in Havana, definitively closing the judicial avenue for the 35-year-old artist, who had no criminal record at the time of his arrest.
The judges Ileana Julia Gómez Guerra, Paula Joaquina Rodríguez Sánchez (rapporteur), Joselín Sánchez Hidalgo, Maida Regalado Rodríguez, and Ariel Fidel Castro López declared the ruling as final and did not authorize the filing of any other appeal.
The original sentence was issued in December 2025 by the Chamber of Crimes against State Security of the Provincial Popular Court of Havana.
The case is related to the placement of posters about human rights in Guanabacoa, Havana, in August 2024. The prosecution accused Almenares of acting under the instructions of the organization Cuba Primero, based abroad, in exchange for a payment of 200 dollars.
The ruling was based on handwriting expert opinions, testimonies from State Security, and the content of the artist's cell phone. The judges stated that "the purpose of the posters was to provoke social disorder and encourage actions against social order."
Moreover, the judges mentioned Almenares' involvement in artistic projects critical of the regime and his statements to media outlets such as Martí Noticias and Diario de Cuba as part of the arguments to convict him, which highlights the direct criminalization of freedom of expression. In addition to imprisonment, the penalty includes the confiscation of his property and a prohibition on leaving the country.
Almenares was arrested on December 31, 2024 at his home in the municipality of La Lisa, Havana, without prior notice or judicial warrant.
He is currently serving a sentence in the prison Cuba-Panamá, in Güines, Mayabeque, a facility designated for patients with HIV/AIDS, despite his family's claims that he does not suffer from this illness.
Her mother, Eva Rivera, has repeatedly reported irregularities in the process, including errors in personal data on the ruling and the lack of verification of her son's location on the day of the events.
The case of Almenares occurs within a context of increasing cultural repression: according to data from 17 artists remained imprisoned in Cuba at the end of 2025, and human rights organizations reported 1,214 political prisoners on the island at the end of February 2026.
"I imagined that would happen. I never expected anything good from them. For political prisoners here in Cuba, there is never a good response," said the mother of the artist to Martí Noticias.
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