Prominent Cuban dissident artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, whose five-year prison sentence ended last week, arrived in the United States on Saturday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.
Rubio did not provide the 38-year-old artist’s whereabouts or when he would arrive.
A video posted on Otero Alcantara’s official Facebook page, which is managed by his close friends, also shows his arrival in the United States.
“After five years of unjust imprisonment, Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara has finally been released,” a post on Otero Alcantara’s Facebook page read.
It also said he was being held in a maximum security prison and that the condition of his release was “permanent departure from the island”.
On Friday, Otero Alcantara was granted a humanitarian visa to travel to the United States after serving his prison sentence.
Who is Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara?
Otero Alcántara is one of the most prominent faces of the San Isidro Movement, a group of artists and intellectuals demanding greater freedom of expression in the communist country.
The Cuban artist was arrested in July 2021 as he was leaving his home to join a mass protest against the blackout in the capital Havana.
In 2022, a court sentenced him to five years in prison on charges of insulting national symbols, contempt and disturbing public order.
“Otero Alcantara’s only ‘crime’ was his refusal to remain silent and to use his art to demand the basic freedoms that the Cuban people have been deprived of for nearly seven decades,” Rubio said in a statement.
The Cuban government has accused him of working on behalf of Washington to destabilize the communist-run island.
Edited by: Shawn Sinico
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