Prominent Cuban dissident artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, whose five-year prison sentence ended last week, has arrived in the United States, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Saturday.

Rubio did not provide the 38-year-old artist's whereabouts or specify when he arrived. However, a video posted on Otero Alcantara's official Facebook page, managed by close friends, showed his arrival in the US.

"After five years of unjust imprisonment, Cuban artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara has finally been freed," read a post on his Facebook page. It also stated he was held in a maximum-security prison and that a condition of his release was "permanent departure from the island."

Otero Alcantara was arrested in July 2021 as he left his home to join mass protests against blackouts in Havana. In 2022, a court sentenced him to five years in prison for insulting national symbols, contempt, and disturbing public order.

"Otero Alcantara's only 'crime' was refusing to stay silent and using his art to demand the basic freedoms everyday Cubans have been denied for almost seven decades," Rubio said in a statement. The Cuban government has accused him of acting on behalf of Washington to destabilize the communist-run island.

Source: www.dw.com