Havana/The Provincial Court of Artemisa denied for the second time, on June 18, the extra-penal license to the political prisoner Javier González Fernández to treat his sufferings. In addition to severe neurological disorders, he suffers from depressive disorder, generalized anxiety and refractory chronic insomnia, Cubalex reported this Friday.
The opponent, sentenced in January 2022 to four years in prison for the crimes of public disorder, contempt, attack and outrage against national symbols after participating in the protests on July 11, 2021 in the city of Artemisa, also has a disorder in the middle ear and a skull fracture caused by a machete attack that he suffered in his youth. Over time, the injury led to permanent insomnia, so he barely sleeps, his father, Jorge González Soto, explained to Martí News.
The health condition of González, 37, requires strict treatment that the health services in Cuban prisons cannot guarantee. An Artemisa medical-penal commission has certified on two occasions that the political prisoner does not have adequate conditions in his current prison regime, but the court has ignored the recommendations. It took him eight months to respond to the request for an extra-penal license, when the established term is two months.
He also has a middle ear disorder and a skull fracture caused by a machete attack he suffered in his youth.
In 2023, the prison authorities sent González to the medical station to receive treatment for his insomnia, neurology and psychiatry follow-up, an adequate diet and the necessary medications, conditions almost impossible to meet on the Island.
However, three days ago, the Artemiseño court notified that his extra-penal license was again denied, arguing that his decompensation was due to the lack of medication and not to the prison conditions. Furthermore, he considered that he can recover in his cell while he serves his sentence, since his pathologies do not justify the granting of the license, they alleged.
Cubalex reported that González has not been treated by a neurologist for more than a year, that he has not had a psychiatric consultation for more than six months and that he has never been treated by a psychologist. He has also been denied a proper diet, so he has lost 14 kilograms.
Cubalex reported that González has not been treated by a neurologist for more than a year
They also do not give him the medications he needs on a regular basis, including amitriptyline, clonazepam, and carbamazepine. Even despite being prescribed zolpidem for life, he has never been administered it in prison.
Finally, after the fight that the family of the Artemiseño – one of the 1,580 protesters detained by 11J – has put up for him to have decent conditions, less than a month ago the judicial authorities granted González Fernández the transition to a less severe regime and he was transferred from the Guanajay prison to a correctional facility with confinement adjacent to the Taco Taco prison, in Pinar del Río.
