Former Cuban prisons chief accused of abuse is now living in Florida
A former chief of prisons in Cuba's Villa Clara province is reported to be living in South Florida despite allegations that he denied medical treatment to one inmate and ripped out the intravenous feeding tubes of another on a hunger strike.
Marino Rivera, about 80 years old, and his wife, a former migration official in the provincial capital, Santa Clara, also are reported to have made more than one trip back to the island, although government defectors are usually blocked from returning.
Miami immigration lawyers Santiago Alpizar and Wilfredo Allen said they have contacted U.S. prosecutors to find out how Rivera could have been allowed into the United States with his background.
Rivera and his wife were both senior officials in the Interior Ministry, in charge of internal security, prisons and firefighters and members of the Communist Party. They could not be located to comment for this story.
Santa Clara dissident Guillermo Farinas, winner of the European Parliament's Sakharov human rights prize in 2010, said Rivera yanked two intravenous needles from his arms in a fit of anger during one of his many hunger strikes in 1998.
