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Political Prisoner will be prosecuted for the third time
By Cuban Democratic Directorate

 

June 27th, 2006 – Cuban Democratic Directorate - Orlando Zapata Tamayo, who is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence in the Taco Taco Prison in Pinar del Río, will be prosecuted for the third time for the same charge of “disrespect for the figure of Fidel Castro” and “disorder in a penitentiary establishment.” Reina Luisa Tamayo Dánger, the mother of the political prisoner, was able to visit him at the prison and has denounced the repressive conditions which her son must endure and the danger he faces by being newly prosecuted.

 

“On the 22nd, his father and I went to visit him. We arrived at the Taco Taco Prison in the early morning in a car we rented to be able to get there because of the amount of food and supplies we were taking to Zapata, including a mattress. Since he was imprisoned he has been sleeping on the floor because he renounced any benefit given to him by the prison. After arriving there, we went to the first gate after waiting an hour we were sent to the office of the director of the prison, Mr. Castillo. There he informed me that Zapata would be sanctioned once again under the same charges,” affirmed Tamayo Dánger to the Cuban Democratic Directorate via telephone.

 

According to his mother, Zapata has carried out various hunger strikes in the last few months in protest for the mistreatment he has received in prison. In April, before an official visit to the prison, he was forcefully given a hair cut, as they restrained him gripping and twisting his neck. He has also been tortured physically and psychologically, placing eight handcuffs on him, four on his wrists and four on his legs, beating him against the floor, throwing him down to the ground, and taking him to a cell nicknamed “La tapia.” After witnessing the abuses against Zapata, five common prisoners screamed, “Zapata!” and after they heard no response, they began to shout, “Down with Fidel!” and made loud sounds with the padlocks on their prison cells. The solidarity of these prisoners resulted in new punishments for Zapata. 

 

Tamayo Dánger holds the Cuban regime responsible for the life of her son, and declares: “If they prosecute my son again, they’ll have to kill me, because I don’t know what would happen if they sanction my son again, because the only thing I would expect is that they execute him. If they have sentenced him to 25 years and 6 months, and they sanction him again for the same cause, I can only expect that at the very least they will give him the same sentence again. I told them with these words: ‘I expect from you nothing less than that you will execute him and then you will have to execute a mother also.’ I ask the world, all the mothers who love liberty to call for the freedom of my son, because he is basically being killed in the Taco Taco Prison in Pinar del Río.”

 

 

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Directorio Democrático Cubano Cuban Democratic Directorate

 

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