Saturday, December 10, 2016

Cuba’s Christian Liberation Movement Leader Gets a Lawyer

Cuba's Christian Liberation Movement Leader Gets a Lawyer / 14ymedio

Eduardo Cardet, national coordinator of the Christian Liberation
Movement (MCL) who has been under arrest since the night of 30 November,
as of Thursday has found a lawyer to represent him. His relatives have
denounced in several media that no lawyer wanted to take on the
activist's defense. Although the lawyer has not had access to his file,
the family is optimistic and affirms that the attorney "fight for his
right to bail."

Yaimaris Vecino, the activist's wife, told this newspaper in a phone
conversation that she was able to see Cardet just after they moved him
to the so-called "provisional prison" of Holguin, located on the Bayamo
highway very close to the airport.

Yaimaris said that the regime opponent still has notable injuries on his
face that he suffered during his arrest, and she clarified that
ultimately the accusations have focused on the crime of attack, for
which the prosecution would ask for a sentence of between one and three
years, as stipulated in the Criminal Code.

Under the law, it is a crime when the use of "violence or intimidation
against a public authority or official or its agents or assistants
impede them from realizing an act appropriate to their duties."

However, according to the testimony of numerous witnesses consulted and
the family, it was the agents of authority, represented by two members
of the State Security in plainclothes and two in uniform, who pounced on
Eduardo Cardet when he arrived on a bicycle at his mother's house.

"It was they who knocked him off his bike and exercised unnecessary
violence to arrest him," his wife explained. No one has officially
explained why they went to arrest him at this time. "The first answer
when I asked the reason for his arrest was from a State Security
official, who told me everything was for his counterrevolutionary
activism and they there were not going to allow any actions of this
time," his wife said.

Yaimaris Vecino explains that the attack occurred at the door of her
house in front of their children, one age 11 and another 13 years
old. "The only police officer who suffered something like an injury was
one who injured his hand when he threw my husband against a fence with
spikes to try to injure him," she adds.

The Christian Liberation (MCL) Movement was founded in 1988 by the
dissident Oswaldo Payá (who was killed in 2012); the MCL promotes a
peaceful change towards democracy and seeks respect for human dignity.

Source: Cuba's Christian Liberation Movement Leader Gets a Lawyer /
14ymedio – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/cubas-christian-liberation-movement-leader-gets-a-lawyer-14ymedio/

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