One of the things you never can forget about a dictatorship, especially when it comes to how they run their prisons, rules, promises and past behaviors, don't mean a thing. As dictators, they get to make the rules, and break them, as they go along.
Take, for instance, the case of political prisoner Francisco Pastor Chaviano González. Imprisoned since 1994, Chaviano, president of the National Council for Civil Rights, in May completed 13 years of a 15-year prison sentence.
Under Cuban law, according to dissident lawyer Juan Carlos González Leiva, Chaviano, 54, has done his time. Moreso, prison officials had told Chaviano that he had earned the right to have two years shaved off his sentence, according to a story by journalist Luis Esteban Espinosa, posted at Payo Libre.
So where is Chaviano this morning?
Still in his prison cell.
His wife, Ana Aguililla, has made numerous pleas for Chaviano's release, but they have been either rejected or ignored, according to Espinosa's story.
Until he is released, Chaviano, who suffers from a variety of health ailments, is serving a virtual death sentence in Fidel Castro's gulag.
"The political prisoner has been denied all of his prison rights, including to a conditional release, for absolutely political reasons," said González Leiva, a leading human rights activist. "He never should have been jailed because he never committed a crime, only acted in defense of human rights."
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