Cuba: Lady in White Released in Exchange for Exile to DR

Ayamara Nieto was taken straight from prison to the airport

In Cuba, she leaves behind her eldest daughter, who was unable to say goodbye to her, as the authorities denied her the final visit she had scheduled for last Friday, August 8.

By 14ymedio

HAVANA TIMES – Political prisoner Aymará Nieto has been forced to leave Cuba and is currently in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, with part of her family—two young daughters and her husband. In Cuba, she leaves behind her eldest daughter, who was unable to say goodbye to her because the authorities denied her the last visit she had scheduled, on Friday, August 8.

According to sources close to the situation who helped arrange her resettlement in the Dominican Republic, she was taken directly from prison to the airport, and her relatives’ phones were tapped, blocking incoming calls and messages. “This has no other name than banishment,” warned activist María Regla Castro, who said she has been taken in by a family at her destination.

Aymara Nieto Muñoz, a member of the Ladies in White and wife of former political prisoner Ismael Boris Reñí, was serving her second consecutive sentence at the Bella Delicia Forced Labor Prison in Havana, where she had been since this May. Her first sentence came in 2018, when she was given four years for the crimes of assault and damage to property. However, while serving that term in El Guatao women’s prison, she was prosecuted for allegedly leading a riot in the prison.

At that time, she received a sentence of five years and four months, and since this April she had been eligible to request a change to a less severe regime. However, the Provincial Court had yet to make a decision. The organization Prisoners Defenders had repeatedly denounced that the regime was conditioning her release on exile. “Aymara Nieto has spent a total of eight years in prison for reasons related to her human rights activism,” the organization stated.

First published in Spanish by 14ymedio and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.

Read more from Cuba here in Havana Times.