After Yosandri Mulet Almarales’ death, NGOs warn of the risk this kind of prisoner is facing in the island’s prisons
14ymedio, Madrid, 3 September 2024 — Three “suicidal ideation events”, three self-harming events and six attempts to take one’s own life have been registered by the Cuban Prison Documentation Center (CDPC in Spanish) since January 1, 2024, by 10 Cuban political prisoners (seven men and three women). In a statement issued together with Justicia 11J – both now part of the Initiative for Research and Incidence – following the suicide committed by Yosandri Mulet Almarales, the programs warn of the special risk posed by these prisoners.
The Mexico-based organization recalls that, before Mulet Almarales’ death, “presumably from injuries sustained after a suicide attempt on August 22,” it says in the report, it had already alerted to his situation. Sentenced to 10 years for participating in the July 11 and 12, 2021 demonstrations in La Güinera, Havana (11J), the 37-year-old had already attempted suicide before, in June 2022, in the maximum security prison Combinado del Este.
On August 22, while on leave from the penitentiary center where he was doing forced labor, he threw himself from the Calabazar bridge, in the capital, and on August 26, his family was told the news. The Initiative quotes activist Marcel Valdés, who said that it is not clear how many days he was in the Julio Trigo hospital, where he was taken “apparently alive”, because “the military authorities took over the place”.
For the NGO, in any case, his death “confirms the need to heed the warnings” it has issued “about suicidal ideation, self-harm and attempts to take one’s own life by Cuban political prisoners”.
Machado Conde, sentenced to 9 years for the 11J, “has been subjected to multiple cases of abuse in prison,” says the NGO, and ha
