Berta Soler was injured in her right foot as a result of violence during her arrest. / Facebook/Ángel Moya

Berta Soler was subjected to violence during her arrest, confined to a dark cell, and interrogated by State Security.

By 14ymedio

HAVANA TIMES – Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, was released on Monday after being held by State Security for 46 hours, during which her whereabouts were unknown. Her husband, Angel Moya, announced the news on social media: “Released bearing the marks of violent repression.”

Moya reported that Berta Soler was released at around 10 a.m. “on a public street, near the headquarters of the Ladies in White,” in the Havana neighborhood of Lawton. In his post, Moya provided details about an injury the activist sustained to her right foot as a result of the violence during her arrest.

Soler was taken to the Aguilera police station in Diez de Octubre and later transferred to the Cotorro police station, where, according to the activist, she received medical attention before being confined to a dark cell.

According to Moya, before her release, Soler was interrogated by an officer from the State Security Investigation Department at Villa Marista. The officer questioned her about what had happened during the peaceful protest at which she was arrested, reminded her that she was under a precautionary measure of house arrest and that the measure could be revoked, and warned her that she would soon be summoned for questioning.

The post included photographs of the injury Berta Soler sustained to her foot during her arrest. Hours earlier, Moya had denounced her detention, saying he had overheard police officers mention that they had seen his wife “walking with a painful limp.”

According to activist Blanca Reyes, Moya went that same day to the Revolutionary National Police (PNR) station on Aguilera Street, in Lawton, in Havana’s Diez de Octubre municipality, to find out where the opposition leader was being held, “since she was beaten and no one knows whether she is at a police station or in a hospital.” Reyes stated: “Our sister’s situation is worrying.”

According to Moya’s account, on Saturday, two days after Soler had been arrested for several hours alongside fellow Lady in White Mara Cristina Labrada — the same Thursday that Yoani Sanchez, director of 14ymedio, was also arbitrarily detained — Berta Soler joined a “public and peaceful protest” with about 20 women from Lawton who were suffering from a lack of water.

The water shortage, Moya claims, is “intentional,” caused by the state-run company Aguas de La Habana to harm the Ladies in White headquarters and the area “within a 50-meter radius.”

Shortly after 10 a.m. that day, “several high-ranking State Security repressors” arrived at the scene and spoke with the protesting women, while the security operation was reinforced over the following hours.

“At noon, representatives of the state-run company Aguas de La Habana arrived and offered an explanation that also failed to convince the protesting women,” Moya recounted. His impression was that the authorities “had no intention of resolving the underlying cause of the problem, which is the deliberate manipulation of the water supply valve.”

With no satisfactory response, half an hour later the demonstrators blocked traffic on Porvenir Avenue, “using their own bodies as barriers.”

Moya said he did not witness the end of the protest because he had already been arrested by the political police and taken to the Aguilera station, where he overheard that his wife was walking in pain and that she had subsequently “been taken in a patrol car to another location,” which was not identified.

After an eight-hour interrogation, Moya was released, but his wife was not. The activist also clarified that “with the exception of Berta Soler, none of the women participating in the protest belong to organizations opposed to the Cuban communist regime. They are working women.”

The regime has intensified its persecution of activists and journalists on the island in recent weeks. Also on Saturday, dozens of residents took to the streets in El Cobre, Santiago de Cuba, to demand the release of Yoel Alejandro Perez Serrano, a young activist known for his community work who had been detained hours earlier by State Security in an operation involving armed agents.

As for independent journalists, before Yoani Sanchez’s detention, Adelth Bonne Gamboa and Camila Acosta, both contributors to CubaNet, had also been arrested during the same week.

Meanwhile, Rolando Pérez Lora, an evangelical pastor known as the Preacher of Christ, was forcibly transferred from Havana to Las Tunas, where he was released on Monday, with a pending police summons.

According to reports from the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights and the Alliance of Christians of Cuba, Perez Lora had been detained while providing pastoral support to a young Christian member of the religious organization, who was also arrested.

In mid-September, State Security also detained Henry Constantin, director of La Hora de Cuba. In his case, rather than being released like the other journalists mentioned above, he was transferred to Kilo 7 prison in Camagüey, where he remains in pretrial detention on a charge of disobedience.

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

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