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Senator Rick Scott, a Republican from Florida, denounced this Sunday the torture, isolation, and cruel treatment that Cuban political prisoner Ángel Jesús Véliz Marcano has endured since being detained after the protests on July 11, 2021, and demanded his immediate release along with that of all political prisoners on the Island.
“Ángel has endured torture, isolation, and cruel treatment simply for defending freedom and shouting Homeland and Life during the events of July 11,” Scott wrote on his X account, directly holding Raúl Castro and Miguel Díaz-Canel responsible for what happened.
Véliz Marcano is a young man from Camagüey sentenced to six years in prison on charges of assault and public disorder, after being detained on July 18, 2021, a week after participating in the historic protests of July 11th.
Since then, her family has documented a series of abuses in the Kilo 8 prison in Camagüey: over 70 days in a solitary confinement cell with the mattress removed during the day and confiscation of personal belongings.
In January 2023, his mother reported that he was moved to a unit with high-risk inmates and later hospitalized for scabies in the prison infirmary.
In October 2024, her mother Ailex Marcano Fabelo begged for public support because her son was on a hunger strike.
Ailex Marcano, who was physically assaulted by State Security in June 2022 while advocating for her son, arrived in the United States in May 2024 to continue her activism from exile.
The case of Véliz Marcano is part of a documented pattern of systematic abuse in Cuban prisons: a report from human rights organizations in June 2025 recorded 24 deaths and 160 allegations of torture in just six months, with Kilo 8 among the most notorious centers.
Scott also criticized in April 2026 that the so-called Cuban "amnesty" for over 2,000 prisoners did not include any political prisoners, while more than 1,200 people remain incarcerated for political reasons on the Island.
"We have heard too many horror stories like this. Enough is enough! That’s why President Trump is fighting for a free Cuba," wrote the senator, who demanded that Castro, Díaz-Canel, and "every member of the Cuban communist regime be held accountable and that all political prisoners be released immediately."
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