HAVANA — Michael Hammer, the top diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, released a video on Friday reporting on his trip to the province of Artemisa.
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Hammer traveled to an apartment in San Antonio de los Baños to meet with the mother of a political prisoner and political dissidents.
“President Trump and Secretary Rubio are insisting that all of the political prisoners be free,” Hammer said during the recorded meeting, according to the video.
The meeting included Carlos Manuel Pupo Rodríguez, a leader of the Partido Unión por Cuba Libre, or PUNCLI, an opposition party.
The meeting also included María Angélica Ramírez, the mother of Denis Hernández Ramírez, who remained behind bars in Artemisa.
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“He is fine, health-wise; he is just very tense,” Ramírez told Hammer about her 33-year-old son, according to the video.
Both Pupo Rodríguez and Hernández Ramírez were arrested in 2021 over protests during a shortage of food and medicine. Their charges were contempt and public disorder.
Catholic church leaders intervened, and although both were released last year, Hernández Ramírez was rearrested in March.
Hammer, who grew up in Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil, served as the U.S. ambassador to Chile from 2014 to 2016.
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The U.S. State Department’s video
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