Yenisey Taboada Ortiz, mother of political prisoner Duannis Dabel León Taboada, published an emotional message on Facebook, thanking the United States Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, for mentioning her son before 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 he is not a criminal, let the world know he is unjustly imprisoned 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 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 carry weapons. What they bring are flowers, and they write poetry and songs, and that is why the regime tries to eliminate them by putting them in jail," affirmed the American diplomat.
Duannis Dabel León Taboada was arrested after participating in the protests of July 11, 2021. Initially, he was sentenced to 21 years in prison for sedition, but his sentence was reduced to 14 years following an appeal process.
His case has become one of the most emblematic examples of repression following July 11th.
In February, he was beaten by a prison officer at Combinado del Este, where he sustained 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, just on the day his mother was trying to visit him, he was locked up again in a punishment cell for writing slogans like "freedom" and "justice" on the walls of his cell in the prison. Since then, she has reported that her son could not receive visits or make phone calls.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) granted on January 19 of this year, considering that both faced a situation of seriousness and urgency, with a risk of suffering irreparable harm.
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