Cuba re-arrests two high-profile dissidents after Vatican prisoner release

Cuba’s highest court has ordered two prominent dissidents to be taken back into custody on the basis that both had separately violated the terms of their parole.

On Tuesday, the Tribunal Supremo Popular – sometimes translated as the People’s Supreme Court – authorised the arrests of Jose Daniel Ferrer and Felix Navarro.

“In addition to failing to comply with the terms of their parole, [Ferrer and Navarro] are people who publicly call for disorder and disrespect for authorities in their social and online environments and maintain public ties with the head of the United States embassy,” said Maricela Sosa, the court’s vice president.

Both men had been released earlier this year as part of a deal mediated by the late Pope Francis and the Catholic Church. As part of the agreement, Democrat Joe Biden, the outgoing United States president, briefly removed Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Biden’s decision was quickly reversed as Republican Donald Trump replaced him as president on January 20. The very next day, Trump ordered Cuba to be restored to the list, which restricts foreign assistance, defence sales and other financial interactions with designated countries.

Still, by March, Cuba had announced it had completed its end of the bargain, releasing a total of 553 people. While critics of the Cuban government have called them “political prisoners”, Havana maintained that the released people represented “diverse crimes”.

On Tuesday, the US Department of State issued a statement condemning the latest arrests, which also reportedly swept up Ferrer’s wife and child.

“The U.S. strongly condemns the brutal treatment and unjust detention of Cuban patriots [Ferrer], his wife and son, as well as Felix Navarro and several other pro-democracy activists,” it said in a social media post.

It added that the US Embassy in Havana “will continue meeting with Cubans who stand up for their fundamental rights and freedoms”.

Maricela Sosa, vice president of Cuba’s top court, accused the two men of violating their parole [Norlys Perez/Reuters]

One of the most prominent critics of the prisoner release was Ferrer himself. A fisherman and founder of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), Ferrer has advocated for democratic reforms on the island, leading to clashes with Havana’s community government.

In an interview with The New York Times following his release in January, Ferrer framed the Vatican-brokered deal as a publicity stunt for the Cuban government.

“In a gesture of supposed good will, they free a number of people who should never have been jailed, and then they want in exchange for that for the Church and the American government to make concessions,” Ferrer said.

“They are applauded, and the world sees that they are so generous.”

Ferrer had publicly refused to accept the conditions of his release, including mandatory court appearances, on the basis that he should have never been imprisoned in the first place.

Both he and Navarro had been arrested before, beginning in 2003 with an incident known as the Black Spring. That saw 75 dissidents be swept into detention based on accusations they were colluding with the US government.

Ferrer had also been arrested in 2019 on allegations he had kidnapped and assaulted a man, a charge he denies.

Then, in 2021, Cuba convulsed with mass protests at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as basic supplies like food and medicine grew scarce. Many protesters blamed the Cuban government for the shortages and denounced the limits to their civil liberties.

Cuba – which has long blamed US sanctions for the island’s economic distress – answered the demonstrations with a police crackdown, resulting in widespread arrests. Navarro and Ferrer were among those detained, until their release in January of this year.

Jose Daniel Ferrer operated a soup kitchen at his home in Santiago, Cuba [Norlys Perez/Reuters]

In a series of social media posts, Ferrer’s sister Ana Belkis Ferrer Garcia announced he had been taken back into custody early on Tuesday morning. Her brother had recently been running a soup kitchen in the city of Santiago de Cuba.

She noted that UNPACU’s headquarters were “looted” and multiple activists were arrested, along with Ferrer’s wife Nelva Ismarays Ortega Tamayo and their son Daniel Jose.

“All of them were taken to an unknown location,” Ferrer Garcia wrote on X. “Miserable and cowardly criminal tyrants! We demand their immediate release and that of all detainees and political prisoners.”

Later, she added that Ortega Tamayo and Ferrer’s son were released “after being held for several hours”.

Human rights organisations also offered condemnations of Ferrer’s and Navarro’s arrests. The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, a nonprofit based in Spain, tied the incident to the death of Pope Francis, who passed away at age 88 on April 21.

“Raul Castro and Miguel Diaz-Canel have not waited even 72 hours after Francis’s burial to undo their commitments,” the observatory said in a statement, naming Cuba’s former and present president, respectively.

The decision to re-incarcerate Ferrer and Navarro, the observatory added, “betrays the Pope’s request”.

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Al Jazeera and news agencies