Ariel, his brother Guido and Angel Moya Acosta were arrested on December 15, 1999 by officers of the Department of State Security. They were arrested in Pedro Betancourt, a town in the province of Matanzas. He was released in August of 2,000 without any explanation.
MATANZAS, August 7, 2000
When we were arrested, they took us to the Matanzas headquarters of the State Security Police. That same night we were transferred to Havana, where we were jailed in the cells of the Technical Department of Investigations which is located in the corners of 100 and Aldabó Streets. We were kept there for approximately two months.
We were interrogated. We were constantly asked about supposed crimes of enticement to commit a crime and public disorder that they wanted us to admit to. I explained that there was no crime, since the only ones who had shown disorderly conduct were the agent provocateurs of the government paramilitary Rapid Response Brigades.
From the 7th to the 11th of December of 1999, there was always a small and strange group of people on the streets of Pedro Betancourt that yelled insults at us and even threw eggs inside our houses. This is the basis for the accusation of public disorder that the Department of State Security wanted to charge us with.
From the jail at 100 and Aldabó Streets in Havana we were taken back to the headquarters of the Political Police in Matanzas. There we were for approximately 17 days. After the first interrogation session we did not see Angel Moya Acosta again. I later learned that he had been taken to Agüica Prison, near the town of Colon.
We were later taken to Combinado del Sur prison, on the outskirts of the city of Matanzas, near a town called Guanabana.
When I was set free, I was taken to an office and asked to sign a document that said: “Immediate freedom is hereby given to citizen Ariel Sigler”
Combinado del Sur prison consists of two buildings of two stories each. The buildings are divided into cubicles for three, six or ten inmates, but they are generally overcrowded. Rain filters every time, and everybody gets wet.
The inmates sleep on thin mattresses made of straw. There are not enough cots for every one, so many have to seep on the floor, because they put more people in the cubicles than their capacity indicates. I was in Section 6, Building 2.
Water is a very critical commodity at the Combinado Sur. It is only turned on between 6:30 and 6:40 in the morning. Only 10 minutes in the entire day. Many times we did not even have time to fill the bottles with water to drink. In those cases, there is no choice but to wait for the next day to see if you have better luck
In the months I was imprisoned there, only once they fumigated against the bedbugs. There are many rats and many roaches. The prisoners try to keep the place as hygienic as possible, because they know that their lives are at risk, but in reality the lack of water makes this very difficult. The officers perform sanitary inspection every day, but don’t solve anything regarding the awful conditions at Combinado del Sur.
Most times there is no medicine for a sick prisoner. There is no anesthesia for dental extractions, and if you have a toothache the most you get is aspirin if you are lucky. Some prisoners sing their name in a waiting list for a dental extraction, but some have been waiting for over 12 months for this.
Lunch and dinner consist of 4 or 5 spoonfuls of rice, a little portion of soup and some vegetable. Very rarely do they get any bread.
I did not witness any beatings, but I did witness plenty of verbal aggression against the prisoners.
Our imprisonment was an injustice against me, against Angel Moya Acosta and against my brother Guido. Our families also suffered.
They, the Political Police, think that by putting us in jail we would cease in our struggle for freedom. They are totally mistaken because we are now going to continue with more energy than before. We will carry out all the civil disobedience acts that we had prepared.
We are asking the international public opinion their support for the immediate release of all political prisoners and prisoners of conscience. These people are not criminals, are people with ideas and they should not be jailed only because their opinions are different from those of the government of Cuba.
The government of Cuba should reflect about this. It should not jail its citizens for demanding their rights. We are demanding the rights proclaimed by a law which is above any national code, the Universal Declaration of Human rights allows us freedom of expression.
* In the wave of repression against dissidents that took place in April, 2003, Ariel Sigler Amaya was detained, subjected to a summary trial and convicted to 26 months
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