“They tried to undress me, I resisted and paid the consequences,” said the blogger detained in Cuba

Havana, October 6, 2012

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Dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez gave some details of her arrest that took place when she tried to cover the trial of a Spanish citizen accused of being responsible for a traffic accident, where political dissident Oswaldo Paya died.

Sanchez was detained for over 30 hours and reported that it started when a huge operation arrested her with her husband and a friend.

“«You want to boycott the court,» said a man dressed all in olive green, to proceed immediately to arrest me. The operation had the size of an arrest made against a drug gang or catch a serial murderer neat, Sanchez wrote.

“But instead of such threatening people, there were only three individuals who wanted to participate in a court hearing, peeking into the courtroom,” he said.

The blogger, who works as a correspondent in Cuba for Spain’s El Pais newspaper, said the arrest helped her experience what pressure is structured around a detainee.

“They put me in a room and tried to undress me. But there is a portion of yourself that no one can pluck. So I resisted and paid the consequences. “

“I immediately imagine Carromero [the detainee accused for the accident] subjected to the same stress of threat and ‘good spirits’ … difficult to cope with something for a long time,” he added.

But she resisted and protested for three hours repeating: “I demand you let me make a phone call, it’s my right.” What appeared to be a useless phrase repeated tirelessly worked and finally they allowed speaking with her father.

Then she went on the stage called “hibernation”. “I refused to eat, to drink any liquid, I refused the medical examination of several doctors,” she said.

Finally she knew she had “win” when they told her she was going to move to Havana. She ends her story by saying, “My thing was just a stumble, the great drama remains the death of two men and the closure of another.”

The Carromero case

The official version says the Spanish citizen was responsible for a bad move at high speed while driving the vehicle carrying the political dissident Oswaldo Paya. After being detained for nearly two months, Carromero “confessed” that it was an accident and now faces trial, where he could sentence to seven years in prison.

But there is another version that actually said there was a second car that hit Carromero and that caused the crash, which would be an attack to Payá.