Roberta Jacobson speaks out for the attack on Cuban opponent Antonio Rodiles

Roberta Jacobson and the US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, denounced the attack on the Sats State Coordinator on Twitter. Oberta Jacobson, head of the United States delegation in the recent talks to resume relations with Cuba, expressed on her Twitter account her concern about the recent attacks on the island against opposition leader Antonio González Rodiles and other activists. In a message in Spanish, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere said she was "deeply concerned" about these acts of violence that occurred last Sunday around the participation of the Ladies in White, Rodiles and other opponents in the Sunday mass of the church of Saint Rita of Casia and a later meeting in Gandhi Park. Hours after Jacobson's message was published, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power, denounced on her Twitter account the attack on Rodiles and the arrest of Cuban activists in what she considered alarming repression against Cuban civil society. ​Rodiles was intercepted a few blocks from his home in the Miramar neighborhood when he was on his way to church, by plainclothes agents. After questioning them that they were not uniformed nor had they identified themselves as police officers, they forced him into a car without police markings. While handcuffed in the back seat of the car, one of the agents punched him in the nose for which he later had to undergo emergency surgery at the Calixto García hospital. Jacobson has explained that once diplomatic relations with Cuba are resumed and embassies are opened it will be easier for the United States to raise its concerns about Human Rights on the island with the Cuban Government.