Cuban political prisoner Alexander Roberto Fernandez Rico complained this week that State Security officers each night are spraying him with a chemical that leaves him with skin rashes and nausea, according to a report at PayoLibre.com.
In a March 23 telephone conversation that was cut short by prison officials, Fernandez, who is blind, told human rights activisits that he is being kept in a dungeon-like cell infested with rats and insects.
Fernandez, 38, was arrested in April 2012 and sentenced to three years in prison after while riding on bus, he shouted anti-Castro slogans to protest a police officer's beating of a passenger who had tried to catch a ride by holding on to the door of the bus.
"My son has been totally destroyed," Mercedes Rico told human rights activists. "He can't see anything, he doesn't walk. The interior ministry's doctors told me he is suffering from polyneuropathy."
Fernandez, who has gone on three hunger strikes in the past four years, is being kept at a prison about 700 kilometers from his home, making it difficult for his family and friends to help him, Rico said.
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