Alexander Verdecia accused over comments on Facebook

Photo take from the profile of Alexander Verdecia on Facebook.

By El Toque

HAVANA TIMES – The Cuban Prosecutor’s Office is requesting a ten-year prison sentence for activist Alexander Verdecia Rodríguez, the Granma coordinator of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu), for expressing critical opinions about the government on his personal Facebook account.

According to the indictment by prosecutor Eliannys Barbara Infante — circulated on social media — Verdecia is accused of the crimes of “propaganda against the constitutional order” and “incitement to commit a crime.” The document states that in January 2024, the defendant “conceived the idea of disturbing public order” through online posts that called on people “to rebel against the system and its leaders.”

According to the prosecution, Verdecia wrote phrases such as: “no more blackouts, down with Díaz-Canel, down with the communist tyranny” [sic], and demanded freedom for political prisoners. He was arrested on February 6, 2025, one year after the posts, and remains in pretrial detention at Las Mangas provincial prison in Granma.

The sentence requested by the Prosecutor’s Office is the maximum penalty under Article 124.2 of the Penal Code, which punishes with up to ten years in prison those who disseminate propaganda against the constitutional order through media, including digital platforms.

Verdecia’s case confirms the systematic enforcement of a policy of maximum severity against citizens who express dissenting opinions about the Cuban state. The criminalization of digital activism has gained traction since the July 11, 2021, protests and forms part of a broader repressive pattern against peaceful dissent.

What happened to Alexander Verdecia is not an isolated case. In January 2023, Sulmira Martínez Perez, known as Salem de Cuba, was arrested in Havana for running a critical Facebook page. Like Verdecia, Sulmira was charged by the Prosecutor’s Office with enemy propaganda. She has remained in prison ever since, awaiting sentencing, after her trial was postponed three times.

Prisoners Defenders estimates that there are over a thousand people imprisoned in Cuba for political reasons, many of them charged for peacefully demonstrating. These legal proceedings are marked by a lack of judicial guarantees, extended pretrial detention, and charges that violate international law.

The imprisonment of Alexander Verdecia for opinions expressed on social media violates fundamental principles of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which recognizes everyone’s right to freedom of expression, including the right to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds. Although Cuba signed the ICCPR in 2008, it has never ratified it and therefore does not participate in the human rights protection mechanisms established by the treaty.

Eliannis Villavicencio Jorge, Alexander’s wife, publicly denounced his arrest and blamed the dictatorship and State Security for separating her daughters from their father. She said that with her partner’s imprisonment, their young daughters have been left without resources and that she is under constant surveillance. “Cuba does not protect children. No more state terrorism,” she wrote on social media.

Villavicencio told Martí Noticias that the family decided not to hire a lawyer for the case because lawyers “defend the system.” Neither Verdecia nor his relatives have been informed of when the trial will take place.

First published in Spanish by El Toque and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.

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