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Political prisoner Félix Navarro has spent 66 days in isolation in Agüica, family says
Sonia Álvarez, wife of the 73-year-old opposition figure, told Martí Noticias that her husband spends his days alone in the infirmary of the Matanzas prison, with no control of his diabetes, and that their daughter Sayli still has no specialist diagnosis at the La Bellotex women's prison.
Félix Navarro, 73, is serving a nine-year prison sentence for his part in the protests of 11 July 2021, on charges of public disorder and assault. His daughter Sayli Navarro was sentenced to eight years over the same events. His wife, Sonia Álvarez, told Martí Noticias that during a visit on Wednesday the opposition figure told her he «had been 66 days alone in a cell», in remarks translated by Yamacoa.
«Félix was ill, they put him in the infirmary, which is as if he were in a punishment cell because he is alone, there is no other prisoner there, nothing», Álvarez said of her husband, who is diabetic, in remarks translated by Yamacoa. By her account, he receives no medical care that would justify the isolation: «The only thing they give him is the diabetes medicine», she said, and maintained that they do not measure his blood sugar. «What they do not want is for Félix to be with the other prisoners, and that is why they keep him isolated there. They have him there as a punishment».
Álvarez, a member of the Ladies in White, said that during the visit a prison officer took away part of the food she had brought because «that was not allowed», and described the prison this way: «In that prison the only thing there is is terror and hunger». Navarro, also convicted in the 2003 Black Spring, is a member of the Pedro Luis Boitel Party for Democracy and honorary president of the Council for the Democratic Transition in Cuba.
About her daughter, imprisoned in La Bellotex, she said she has a gastrointestinal problem for which she has had no specialist diagnosis: the prison doctor prescribed pills the family managed to obtain, and an assessment by a gastroenterologist remains pending. «There is no check-up there, there is no ultrasound there, there is nothing there», she said. She also said the water in that prison is contaminated and the food is of very poor quality.
Sources: Martí Noticias · Serie Yamacoa: Presos políticos en Cuba (Prisoners Defenders)
Data updated: 2026-10-24T05:30:00.000Z