Havana/“They put me in the police car upside down with my hands behind me, and they beat me there.” The complaint was made from a cell by Yunaykis de la Caridad Linares Rodríguez, a 11J political prisoner released in 2025, after being arrested on June 2 during a protest in Santa Amalia, in the Havana municipality of Arroyo Naranjo.
According to reported the feminist magazine Tense WingsLinares has been on hunger strike since June 5 at the El Capri police station, where she remains detained after more than 72 hours without her relatives having received clear information about her legal situation.
The young woman managed to take a video from the cell on the same day of her arrest. In the recording, he claimed to have been a victim of police violence during the arrest. In addition to the beatings, he stated that an agent blocked his breathing, “suffocating me again and again.”
All of these movements were carried out without due communication to their families, who remain at the doors of the police unit amid “evasion, mistreatment and silence.”
The arrest occurred during a demonstration in Santa Amalia, one of the areas of Havana where protests and banging pots and pans have been recorded amid the prolonged blackouts that affect the capital. Linares, who had already been convicted for her participation in the protests of July 11, 2021, was once again in police custody in a context of growing social tension.
On June 4, the authorities tried to transfer her to the Vivac, a provisional detention center in Havana, but she was finally returned to the El Capri station with the argument that she should be evaluated by psychiatric specialists. The magazine warned that all these movements were carried out without due communication to their families, who remain at the doors of the police unit amid “evasiveness, mistreatment and silence.”
The possibility of a transfer to a psychiatric hospital has increased concern for his physical, emotional and legal integrity. Family sources fear that this decision will be used to discredit their complaint or keep it under control away from public scrutiny.
The Linares case has had a long repressive file since 11J. In February 2025, the young was released on parole along with other political prisoners, after having served part of an eight-year prison sentence for sedition. His release from prison did not mean the annulment of the sentence, but rather the serving of the sentence outside the prison.
The new arrest occurs just fifteen months after his release
As the sentence remains valid, a new arrest can be used by the authorities to revoke the prison benefit and return the person to prison. In the case of political prisoners released in 2025, the regime has maintained many of them with the threat of returning to prison if they participate in protest acts again or if they fail to comply with the restrictions imposed after their release.
In 2022, Linares was one of those processed due to the events at Toyo Corner, in Havana, where one of the most memorable images of the 11J protests occurred: a patrol car overturned by protesters and some young people waving a Cuban flag over the vehicle. The Prosecutor’s Office initially requested 17 years in prison for her for sedition. She was later sentenced to 14 years, and the Supreme Court reduced the sentence to eight years after an appeal.
During her imprisonment in the Western Women’s Prison, known as El Guatao, family members and human rights organizations reported health problems, lack of medication, and disciplinary punishments. Linares suffered from thyroid and was taken to a punishment cell on several occasions after demanding that her rights be respected. The new arrest occurs just fifteen months after his release and returns his case to the same point of vulnerability.
