HAVANA, February 14 (José Antonio Fornaris, Cuba-Verdad) – Cuban
police subject prisoners to subtle and not-so-subtle tortures at the
headquarters of the Technical Investigations Department (DTI) in Havana,
according to the testimony of dissident Leonardo Bruzón Ávila, 45,
who was recently released after two months in that facility.
"From the beginning of my confinement, the treatment was inhuman,"
Bruzón says slowly. "I have heard that these methods had not been
used in Cuba since 1990, but in my case they were used. I also learned that they
were used on other people, similarly for political reasons."
Bruzón was arrested December 3 as a result of a campaign of prayer in
which he and fellow dissidents belonging to the February 24th Movement were
asking for the release of political prisoners in Cuba. Bruzón, the
president of the Movement, was arrested at his home, which doubles as the
headquarters of the organization, and taken to DTI headquarters, known locally
simply by its address, at the corner of 100 and Aldabó Streets.
Bruzón says, "From the time of my arrest, the political police
kept telling me that I had been asking for liberty for political prisoners, but
that now, who was going to ask for liberty for me?" He went on a hunger
strike lasting 42 days, "one," he says, "for every year of the
Communist dictatorship."
Bruzón says he was kept handcuffed to the bars of his cell for four
days, with his hands up in such a way that he couldn’t rest. In any case,
the cell was permanently flooded. "The water came to just under the knees,"
says Bruzón.
Bruzón looks like a broken man. His left arm exhibits an odd twitch,
reminiscent of the spastic movement in the hands of some clocks. "That,"
says Bruzón pointing with his eyes at his left arm, "is because I
spent a long time with my hands up high, handcuffed. I have a pain in my
shoulder and in the area of the left lung. Ever since they handcuffed me to the
bars I’ve had this tremor. I think it’s a result of the humidity
because of all the water in the cell, but the problem was aggravated when they
locked me in the cold room." That’s what his keepers called the
punishment cell where he was later taken.
On December 10 [the day commemorating the signing of the UN Declaration of
Human Rights] he started yelling from his cell hurrahs for human rights and
asking for liberty for Cuba. Other prisoners in the block joined in, he says. As
a result of that incident, he was taken to the "cold room."
"There, in a small room, they took my clothes off and lowered the
temperature. I stayed there two days. I became very ill. On the second day they
took me out and several officers of the Department of State Security took me to
the ‘Carlos J. Finlay’ military hospital," he says.
"(I was in the hospital for) six days. They tied me to a bed and
force-fed me through a tube. I was unconscious when I arrived at the hospital.
When I came to, I demanded loudly that they take all those things off (referring
to the tubes and tie-downs). Some State Security officers came up and told me
they were not going to allow anything to happen to me, that I couldn’t die,
and that they had ordered that the treatment be maintained," he remembers.
Bruzón has not been tried and, at this point, doesn’t know
whether he will be brought to trial.
Versión original
en español
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