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Political prisoner Saylí Navarro was disciplined last Sunday by the authorities of the women's prison La Bellotex in Matanzas, after reporting the beating that her father, also a political prisoner Félix Navarro, suffered in Agüica prison in Colón, Matanzas province.
The complaint was made public by the Lady in White Sonia Álvarez Campillo, mother of Saylí and wife of Félix, who received the information directly from her daughter via a phone call.
"In a phone call, Saily informed me that on May 4, she was taken to the prison administration to notify her that a disciplinary measure had been imposed on her for revealing the news about the beating that Yoslen Pedroso, the notorious figure from Agüica prison, gave to her father, Félix Navarro," Álvarez Campillo reported.
The sanction involves reducing the sentence reduction for good behavior that he was entitled to: instead of deducting 60 days, only 30 days will be deducted.
"The penalty is that from the reduction they were supposed to make of 60 days, they will only deduct one month. They will not deduct two months," the mother clarified.
The aggression that triggered the punishment occurred on April 8, when Major Yoslén Pedroso Sotolongo, Head of Internal Order at the Agüica prison, struck Félix Navarro, leaving visible marks on his face and body.
After the assault, the 72-year-old opposition member was placed in a punishment cell under total isolation.
Saylí learned about the events during a prison visit with her father and described them in a phone call to Iván Hernández Carrillo, a family friend and former member of the Group of 75 from the Black Spring, bringing the complaint to public attention.
This is not the first time the regime has punished Saylí for exercising her right to report from prison.
His transition to a regime of minimal severity has been denied on three occasions for rejecting the ideological indoctrination of the so-called "penal reeducation."
In 2022, she was threatened with transfer to a prison in Guantánamo and her phone was suspended for 15 days after denouncing violations of due process.
In January 2025, his change in measure was delayed by six months due to fasting in commemoration of 11J and for making public denunciations from prison.
Both father and daughter were arrested on July 12, 2021, in Perico, Matanzas, and sentenced in March 2022: Félix to nine years and Saylí to eight, for their participation in the protests of July 11, 2021.
Félix Navarro, founder of the Pedro Luis Boitel Party for Democracy, was conditionally released on January 18, 2025, as part of an agreement between the Cuban regime, Washington, and the Vatican, but was rearrested on April 29, 2025 on charges of leaving his municipality without judicial authorization on seven occasions.
At the end of April 2026, the Auxiliary Bishop of Havana, Eloy Ricardo Domínguez Martínez, visited both prisoners and offered them exile as an option; father and daughter rejected forced exile and refused to leave Cuba.
Amnesty International recognizes Saylí Navarro as a prisoner of conscience since October 2024 and has demanded her immediate release, along with that of her father.
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