Cuba’s Latest Dissident Hunger Striker

HAVANA TIMES, April 24 — Opposition activist and former political prisoner Jose Daniel Ferrer began a hunger strike on Monday after having spent three weeks in custody without the Cuban authorities formally charging him, reports AFP.

“Now, this morning, he told his wife (Belkis Cantillo), he initiated his hunger strike,” said Elizardo Sanchez, the head of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, when speaking to the news agency yesterday.

Ferrer, 41, who is the leader of the opposition party Union Patriotica de Cuba, was arrested three weeks ago in Santiago de Cuba along with 42 other people. He had previously been arrested in 2003 together 74 other dissidents and was sentenced to 25 years in prison, however he was released in 2010.