Cuban political dissident José Daniel Ferrer, 55, arrived this Monday (13) in Miami, in the United States, where he received asylum after suffering repression by the Cuban dictatorship in recent decades.
At the beginning of the month, he had agreed to go into exile in the United States after reporting that he suffered in prison “brutal beatings, torture, humiliation, death threats and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment”, according to his family.
Ferrer was one of 75 political prisoners during the 2003 Black Spring, as a wave of arrests promoted by the Cuban communist regime was called. He has spent more than half of the last 20 years behind bars.
In April, the Cuban dictatorship arrested Ferrer again, after he had been released in January in an agreement with the United States government mediated by the Vatican, in the final days of the Joe Biden administration.
Cuba’s Supreme People’s Court claimed that the dissident leader was arrested because he failed to appear at two mandatory court hearings.
Ferrer, founder of the opposition group National Patriotic Union, said at the time that he was unjustly arrested and therefore did not need to attend any court hearing.
This Monday, the American State Department celebrated Ferrer’s release and arrival in the United States.
“Ferrer’s leadership and tireless defense of the Cuban people represented a threat to the regime, which repeatedly imprisoned and tortured him. We are happy that Ferrer is now free from the regime’s oppression,” the ministry said in a statement.
