Anyone familiar with the Castro dictatorship might conclude that the only reason it released Ariel Sigler Amaya on Saturday was not because of the intervention of the Catholic Church, but because it was afraid that Sigler might die while still in its custody. Considering the uproar after political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo died on Feb. 23, that was a risk the regime decided to not take again.
There, of course, is no confirmation of this from regime. All we have is a track record of the regime sentencing political prisoners to de facto death sentences; torturing them to the verge of death; and then using them as pawns for its own gain, releasing them in ones and twos as a way to relieve pressure on itself and to convince those looking to defend the regime that something might actually be changing in Havana. That the Cuban Catholic hierarchy has given its imprimatur on this exercise, makes it that much more distasteful.
That their self-interest alone motivated the Castros to release Sigler seems more likely after a report today on Sigler's medical condition.
The blog Baracutey Cubano reported that doctors today had to place an IV in each arm after they determined he was severely dehydrated. Doctors were called to Sigler's home after he passed out on Saturday, and again today, according to report.
Apparently, the dictatorship had had enough with Sigler, a former heavyweight boxer who left prison as a 106-pound paraplegic, and was ready to let him go, before he might die and stain it with his blood. It didn't even try to disguise his true condition before releasing him.
Unfortunately for the Castros, the responsibility for Sigler's condition and for what one day may be his premature death, has already been established.
It is theirs, and theirs alone. Nobody, not even the church, will be able to absolve them of that.
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