HAVANA: Cuba’s Supreme Court said Tuesday it had revoked the provisional release from prison granted to opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer as part of a landmark deal struck with former US President Joe Biden in return for sanctions relief.
Ferrer and Felix Navarro, another prisoner granted a similar reprieve in January had “failed to comply with the provisions of the law during the probation period to which they were subjected,” the court said in a statement.
Ferrer, who has long been in and out of prison on the communist-run island, was granted conditional release in January after his latest stint of more than three years.
The 54-year-old was the most high-profile of the prisoners that Cuba released after Biden agreed to remove the country from a US list of terrorism sponsors.
Havana claims it had released all 553 people it had agreed to free under the deal, including 231 considered “political prisoners” by rights groups. Most of the 231, including Ferrer, had been rounded up in a crackdown on mass protests against the Cuban government in July 2021.
Biden’s successor, Donald Trump, has since reinstated Cuba on the terror list. Ferrer was one of 75 opposition members arrested in a three-day period of repression in March 2003 known as the “Black Spring,” accused of “conspiratorial activities.”
They were handed sentences of six to 28 years on charges of working with a foreign power. Ferrer got 25 years. He was released in 2011, along with 130 other political prisoners, following mediation by the Catholic Church.
Later that year, he founded the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), one of the most active opposition organizations in the one-party state. He was sent back to prison following the unprecedented protests of July 2021.
‘Prisoners of conscience’:
The Supreme Court said Tuesday that Ferrer had ignored two summons to appear in court.
“Not only did he not appear, but he also announced via his social media profile, in blatant defiance and violation of the law, that he would not appear before the judicial authority,” it added.
Dissident Navarro, 72, was also released in January under the Vatican-mediated deal. But the court said he had left his municipality seven times without seeking a judge’s permission “in blatant violation of the law.”
Navarro has said he was arrested with his 38-year-old daughter Sayli in 2021 when they approached police for information about protesters detained. Navarro, his daughter and Ferrer had all been declared “prisoners of conscience” by Amnesty International.