Cuban government releases prominent dissident from jail but puts him under house arrest

The Cuban government released dissident José Daniel Ferrer from prison Friday, but sentenced him to house arrest for four-and-a-half years under charges labeled as political by several human rights organizations.

Ferrer had been in prison since September and was tried at the end of February. The whole process was plagued with irregularities, according to reports from family members and activists.

“The first three months were the most difficult, the hardest I have experienced in my entire life as a political prisoner,” said Ferrer in a phone call with el Nuevo Herald from Santiago de Cuba. The dissident reported beatings, “torture,” and “constant humiliation.”

According to his account, he spent six months in an isolation cell in the Aguadores prison in Santiago de Cuba. He received no medical treatment because he refused to wear the uniform given to inmates. He also went on a hunger strike that lasted more than 20 days.

The prison guards did not allow him to read or write.

“I experienced hunger as I had never lived before. I look like I’m out of a concentration camp, I lost 25 kilos,” about 55 pounds, he said.

In photos Ferrer sent to a brother living in Miami and obtained by the Miami Herald, the dissident, looking thinner and emaciated, has a shaven head.

In September last year, the government arrested and accused Ferrer, leader of the opposition organization Cuban Patriotic Union, UNPACU for its name in Spanish, of assaulting and participating in the kidnapping of a man.

Three other dissidents accused by the same man received sentences of between three and five years, which were also commuted to house arrest.

Ferrer had previously been imprisoned for eight years for his anti-government political activities.

The UNPACU leader said he was transferred to the provincial court on Friday, where the sentence was read to him. But he refused to sign a document accepting its terms, which indicated that he and the others could return to prison “if we do not comply,” he said.

Ferrer said that he will continue opposing the government. “I can be sentenced to a thousand years for false crimes, but I will never give up, and I will continue fighting for the cause of freedom in Cuba,” he said.

His brother, Luis Enrique Ferrer, believes the house-arrest sentence is a sword over Ferrer’s head.

“The regime condemns him and sends him to his house to release international pressure, but later they can lock him up again,” he said.

Daniel Ferrer’s wife, Nelva Ortega, told the Herald that the judge overseeing Ferrer’s trial did not allow evidence contradicting the accusation by the government attorney. That evidence included audio of a call suggesting that the man who accused Ferrer had been pressured by Cuban state security agents to file the charges.

Days before the trial, Cuban state television showed footage of Ferrer in which he appears to be beating himself while in prison and then accuses an officer of the assault. Ferrer said that he had not yet seen the video but that it was “fake.”

The arrest of the Cuban dissident generated criticism around the world. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the European Union, Amnesty International and several human rights organizations called on the Cuban government to release him.

“I have no words to thank you for all you did,” Ferrer said, “because I can certainly assure you that if I am still alive, it is largely due to that solidarity.”

Follow Nora Gámez Torres on Twitter: @ngameztorres

This story was originally published April 3, 2020 at 6:11 PM.