SOS: Attempted Riot in Prison 1580. Increase in Repression Against Angel Santiesteban and the Other Inmates

SOS: Attempted Riot in Prison 1580. Increase in Repression Against Angel
Santiesteban and the Other Inmates / Angel Santiesteban
Posted on May 11, 2013

After the attempted riot in Prison 1580

Last night, Sunday May 5 at 7:45 PM, an inmate — Reniel Agramonte Valle
— was beaten by two guards: Jesus and Andy the karate man. The inmates
of both barracks started shouting against abuse and almost all looked
through the windows and bars while the guards continued the abuse of the
black, slight and famished 24-year-old.

The prisoners began to hit the gate until it broke and opened; the
guards seeing the possible population unnerved all about them, fled and
forgot how numerous they and their batons were, the same ones who
minutes before struck the prisoner in question, and who by then had been
taking their pills for chronic mental illness that are supplied to them
several times a day.

To stop the potential riot, the senior officer, when he reached the
scene, freed the prisoner, and when they saw him return to the barracks
it began to calm the spirits of his comrades who had already begun
yelling "Down with Fidel," "Down with dictatorship," "Tomorrow we will
get the news to Radio Martí," "Assassins," and "Abusers," among others.

This morning, when the inmates attended the breakfast, they were met
with German shepherds, the ones who on just seeing a prison uniform
begin to bark and are very aggressive with them, Nazi-style.

In previous days they also beat several prisoners and after the
beatings, they put them in cells hidden from the eyes of the rest of the
prison population to hide their injuries and bodily signs of violence
against them.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580, San Miguel del Padrón

Sowing Terror

One day after the attempted riot in the prison, they began the
interviews and the removal of all persons who regularly conversed with me.

They want to keep inmates away from me because they consider a dangerous
element my relating to them. And so they were taken to other barracks.

Now the prisoners afraid to approach me because they don't want to be
harmed. I am also concerned about some who claim not to care; because
when they receive reprisals for being close to me, my guilty conscience
is great because their fates are worse just for talking to me.

Even so, some have changed strategy and started to leave me papers on my
bed with silent solidarity messages.

A prisoner on a hunger strike, Jesús Guerra Camejo, for talking with me,
has also been taken from the company to an unknown destination.

The inmates are constantly interviewed to obtain information about me,
writing or any data they might provide about me.

Ángel Santiesteban-Prats
Prison 1580, San Miguel del Padrón

10 May 2013

http://translatingcuba.com/sos-attempted-riot-in-prison-1580-increase-in-repression-against-angel-santiesteban-and-the-other-inmates/