The Cuban regime has accumulated criminal charges against Javier Ernesto Martín Gutiérrez, the athlete known as the Cuban "Spiderman," while keeping him in provisional detention without a trial date since April.
According to information from his partner to Martí Noticias, authorities have added two new charges —contempt and propaganda against the constitutional order— to the original charge of public disorder.
What exacerbates the situation is that the contempt charge had been withdrawn at the beginning of the process due to a lack of evidence to support it. "It was proven that he had not committed any contempt, and now they are bringing it back," denounced Lisandra Cuza, the athlete's partner.
The defense learned of the new charges in mid-September through a court document that rejected a request for judicial oversight. "They obviously denied the judicial oversight, but we were alarmed because two more charges had been filed against him," Cuza explained.
The defense attorney has also been unable to access the case file. When he went to Villa Marista—headquarters of State Security—to consult it, he was told that "it hasn't been sent yet, that it is at the court."
Martín Gutiérrez, **34 years** old and a mixed martial arts champion, was arrested on April 24 after peacefully protesting from the balcony of his home in the Marianao municipality of Havana, where he criticized the prolonged blackouts and the social crisis.
During the arrest, he reported that about ten State Security officers beat him before transferring him successively to the sixth police unit in Marianao, Villa Marista, and finally the Combinado del Este, a maximum-security prison where he remains incarcerated.
In August, according to a study by Diario de Cuba, the athlete sent a letter to the prosecutor reporting that the toxicology tests, mental health evaluations, and investigations into alleged foreign funding were all negative throughout the 22 days of research; nonetheless, he was placed in provisional detention.
In July, he had warned that he would go on a hunger strike if no date for his trial was set within six months.
MC K-Libre: sick, imprisoned, and with no trial in sight
In parallel, the rapper Andrés Matos Alcántara, known as MC K-Libre, remains in the 1580 prison in Havana without a trial date and facing serious health issues: he suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and type 1 diabetes, and in September, episodes of hypertension were reported during his incarceration.
The authorities denied a new request for a change in precautionary measures—the second rejection following another in July—and notified the family of the decision on Tuesday.
The musician Raudel Collazo, known as Escuadrón Patriota, publicly denounced: “They are being especially cruel with his case for being very critical of the dictatorship from Cuba; that is his main offense, because the regime has nothing else against him.”
Matos was arrested on June 25 when he attended a police summons at the Siboney unit in the Playa municipality, where he was handcuffed and taken away without being shown an arrest warrant. The authorities link him to pot-banging protests in the Barbosa neighborhood, triggered by power outages lasting more than 30 hours. His wife, Ariacna Garcés Gómez, denied that he had organized or incited those demonstrations.
Both cases are part of a documented increase in repression throughout 2026.
The Cuban regime maintains a historic record of 1,372 political prisoners, including 40 minors and 158 women, according to Prisoners Defenders.
Among the most recent cases are Anna Bensi and her mother, sentenced to two years of liberty restriction for recording a MININT officer, and the founders of El4tico, against whom the Prosecutor's Office requested up to 10 years in prison for propaganda against the constitutional order.
Anonymous sources from the Cuban penal system consulted by Diario de Cuba revealed that in cases classified by the regime as "sensitive" — when the defendant has publicly questioned the government or participated in protests — "pre-trial detention far exceeds the precautionary function assigned by law, becoming a mechanism for neutralization, procedural control, and anticipatory punishment".
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