Yenisey Taboada Ortiz, mother of political prisoner Duannis Dabel León Taboada, published an emotional message on Facebook thanking the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, for mentioning her son at the General Assembly during the extraordinary session on Tuesday.
"Thank you, Mr. Ambassador!!! For bringing my son's name to the UN. Let the world know that he is not a criminal, let the world know that he is unjustly in prison for telling the truth," wrote Taboada.
"Duannis Dabel León Taboada, you will never be alone, my son," Taboada concluded in his post, adding a call for the freedom of all political prisoners and a "Long live 11J."
Waltz intervened in that session —called by the Cuban regime to discuss the U.S. embargo— and displayed photographs of Cuban political prisoners to the delegates, reading their names aloud.
Among them, he mentioned Duannis León Taboada, whom he described as a 24-year-old poet sentenced to 14 years in prison and currently in solitary confinement at Combinado del Este in Havana.
"They are not violent, they do not have weapons. What they carry are flowers, and they write poetry and songs, and that is why the regime tries to eliminate them by imprisoning them," stated the American ambassador.
Duannis Dabel León Taboada was arrested after participating in the protests on July 11, 2021. He was initially sentenced to 21 years in prison for sedition, but his sentence was later reduced to 14 years following an appeals process.
Her case has become one of the most emblematic of the post-11J repression.
In February 2026, he was beaten by a prison officer at Combinado del Este, where he suffered an open wound on his eyebrow for which he did not receive proper medical attention, and was subsequently moved to a punishment cell.
In April, he was once again transferred to a punishment cell for writing slogans such as "freedom" and "justice" on the walls of his company within the prison, precisely on the day his mother attempted to visit him. Since then, his mother has reported that Duannis cannot receive visits or make phone calls.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted precautionary measures in favor of Duannis and his mother on January 19, 2026, considering that both were facing a situation of seriousness and urgency, with the risk of suffering irreparable harm.
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