Cuban artist and dissident Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara today left Havana to the United States, after being released on Friday for humanitarian reasons after five years of imprisonment, sources close to the political prisoner reported.
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Lusa
” Aafter five years of unjust imprisonment, Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara was finally released, although in exchange for his definitive departure from the island”, said activist Anamely Ramos on social networks.
Otero Alcántara left from Havana’s José Martí Airport at 4:05 p.m. on a flight from American Airlines from Havana to Miami two days before the end of his sentence.
Anamely Ramos noted that today, “on arriving in Miami, her first wish is to visit the Hermitage of Charity” and “leave an offering of thanks”.
The activist indicated that in the coming days Otero Alcántara “has several meetings scheduled with the press and, gradually, hopes to meet with organizations, friends and people who want to receive it”.
According to the activist “hundreds of political prisoners” remain in Cuba, and “an entire nation may be going through the worst moment in its history”.
On Friday, Anamely Ramos had recalled, in another statement on social networks, that since the beginning of 2023, Otero Alcántara “accepted exile as the only way to continue his work as an artist and activist, after having endured all the repression imposed on him”.
The leader of the 38-year-old San Isidro critical movement, considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, served a five-year sentence in Guanajay prison (west of Cuba) for the crimes of “disregard, disturbance of public order and repeated desecration of national symbols”.
Otero Alcántara was arrested on July 11, 2021, when he attempted to participate in the anti-government protests of that time, the largest in decades in Cuba.