14ymedio, Havana, 8 June 2024 — The Cuban Government prevented activist and independent reporter Armando Sardiñas from leaving the country when he was preparing to travel to Nicaragua this Thursday, according to what was reported on his social media the following day. Two State Security agents, who have been closely watching him for months, approached him at Terminal 3 of the José Martí International Airport, where they confiscated and destroyed his ticket. They also explained that he was “disqualified from traveling.”
“As he is a collaborator of an independent press that, according to State Security, responds to the interests of another country, he could not leave Cuba. Either as a tourist or to emigrate,” reads the activist’s Facebook post, in which he refers to himself in the third person.
As explained by CubaNet, the media outlet for which he collaborates, after a lieutenant colonel of State Security – whom he does not identify by name – arrested him at the airport, he was taken to a room where a brief interrogation took place that did not last more than 15 minutes.
During that time, the political police agents asked him if he “continued to do journalism” referring to his work at CubaNet, and asked him to “stop doing it” under the threat of imprisoning him again, because “they had something to accuse him with.” One of the agents called him a mercenary, because he works for a press “paid by the empire,” according to the media.
In a conversation he had with his family moments after the incident, and from w
