Havana/Moisés Legrá Díaz was released by the regime on April 7, after spending almost two months deprived of liberty under provisional arrest, as a precautionary measure, accused of the crime of “propaganda against the constitutional order.”
The arrest had occurred on February 13 in Havana, after the young man responded to a summons from State Security in Villa Marista, following the appearance of posters in the Arroyo Naranjo municipality with the phrase: “Patria y Vida” and insults to President Miguel Díaz-Canel. From the political police operations center he was transferred to the Combinado del Este, a maximum security prison.
As stated for 14ymedio Javier Larrondo, president of the NGO Prisoners Defenders, the precautionary measure has been withdrawn from Legrá Díaz after handwriting analysis could not verify that the written signs coincided with his handwriting. Therefore, he clarifies, the release of Legra Díaz is not part of the 51 political prisoners that the regime promised released after the agreement reached with the Vatican last March. Nor of the 2,010 prisonerswhich the Cuban Executive announced that it would release starting this April, for the moment, all common.
Legrá Díaz, a father of three children and no criminal record, was released as innocent. However, he was held since his arrest in overcrowded and malnourished conditions, according to their mother denounced and civil organizations. During the weeks that he remained in provisional prison, activists and family members warned of the deterioration of his health.
During the weeks that he remained in provisional prison, activists and family members were warning of the deterioration of his health.
One of these independent organizations was Cubalex, which he denounced that, although Legrá had undergone a calligraphic examination to determine whether he was the author of the posters and the result had been negative, he remained detained.
The return of Legrá Díaz to his home, where his family was waiting for him, was confirmed by a call from his mother to Martí News: “Since two and a little in the afternoon, Moisés has been here in the house with the children” who, the mother describes, “cried and hugged their father.”
The criminal figure of “propaganda against the institutional order”incorporated into the 2022 Penal Code, penalizes any critical expression that the State considers “incitement against the social order or the socialist State”, without precisely defining what acts constitute that crime, which makes it a legal instrument to persecute dissent.
The case exposes the abusive use of provisional detention as preventive punishment, as well as the use of ambiguous criminal figures to persecute freedom of expression
Cubalex points out that The case of Legrá Díaz, a father with no criminal record or activist past, exposes the abusive use of provisional prison as preventive punishment, as well as the use of ambiguous criminal figures to persecute freedom of expression.
The same crime has been applied, with tax requests asking for up to nine years in prison, for street posters or graffiti –like other recent cases reported by 14ymedio– but also for publications on social networks or direct criticism of the government, among which the example of the conviction and imprisonment of young people is notable. creators of the digital collective El 4tico.
