Former Cuban political prisoner Jorge Alberto Liriano Linares, who spent several years in the Castro gulag, has died, according to journalist Roberto de Jesus Guerra Perez, who reported the news on Facebook.
As I noted in a 2008 profile of Liriano, he distinguished himself as a journalist reporting on what he witnessed in the Castro gulag:
In prison, however, Liriano, a member of the Christian Democratic Party and Pedro Luis Boitel Political Prisoner organization, has distinguished himself as a journalist, or more precisely, a witness to the horrors of the Castro gulag. He doesn't report on what is happening to him, only to what is happening to his fellow prisoners. Punch his name into Google and what you will find are numerous accounts of life and death in the Castro gulag, with Liriano as the primary source.
Most recently, Liriano reported on an upswing in violence by a "death squad" of guards towards inmates at the Kilo 7 prison in Camagüey. In March, "32 inmates were victims of savage beatings and terrifying torture, most with injuries to the head," Liriano said.
Liriano also describes how some prisoners were stripped of their clothes and "crucified" by being handcuffed to the bars of their cells for three days without food or water.
"This is the cruel, unusual fate of prisoners confined in more than 200 prisons and forced labor camps sustained by the island's regime, due to the hostile policy of the government, an authoritarian government that for half a century in power has recognized in theory the rights of the people, but does not guarantee the protection and implementation thereof. That is why in the Kilo 7 prison thousands of prisoners ... areterrified and living with the permanent anguish of trying to survive without being beaten, tortured or killed unjustly " Liriano said.
Liriano had recently fallen ill, after he was assaulted by Cuban police.
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