Guido Sigler Amaya
Doing the dirty work of Raúl Castro and Cardinal Jaime Ortega, prison guards continue to put the squeeze on 11 prisoners of conscience to accept forced exile in exchange for their "freedom."
For example, about midnight on Jan. 20, guards woke up prisoner Guido Sigler Amaya, handcuffed him and took him to an office for a supposed meeting with a senior prison official, according to a report written by Sigler's brother Miguel, who lives in Miami.
The official never showed up and instead, Sigler — one of the Group of 11 covered by a deal for their release between the Spain, the Catholic Church and the Cuban dictatorship — was alone in a room with a State Security thug name Orlando Figueroa.
For two hours, Figueroa, a familiar figure at the prisons in Matanzas province, threatened and blackmailed Sigler, telling him that if he did not accept exile to Spain, he would have to serve the entire 20-year sentence he received during the "black spring" of 2003.
Figuerora also told Sigler that family members in Cuba and in the United States had abandoned him.
Sigler realized what was going on and got into a loud argument with Figueroa, which caused Sigler to suffer painful headaches brought on by a rise in blood pressure.
But it was Figueroa who gave up the fight, returning Sigler to his cell after about two hours.
"These psychological torture, consisting of threats and blackmail, are often used against all political prisoners of conscience Cubans living in the Castro gulag," wrote Miguel Sigler Amaya, who wrote the account after a telephone call from Cuba from his brother Juan Francisco Sigler Amaya.
Those methods are being used most harshly against the Group of 11, who are all that stand in the way between the dictatorship and the church and their chance to convince the world that the completion of the lie that prisoner release deal is proof that things have really changed in Cuba.
The courage of Guido Sigler Amaya and the other prisoners reveals the truth.
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