HRF calls once again on Cuba’s dictatorial government to drop all criminal charges against him and provide guarantees that it will cease harassing and detaining him arbitrarily for exercising his right to freedom of expression.

Motley was in Cuba for three days as the international attorney for political prisoner Danilo “El Sexto” Maldonado, a celebrated Cuban artist imprisoned since Castro’s death more than twenty-one days ago.

The prominent Cuban artist and activist was beaten and taken from his home in Havana on November 26, the day after Fidel Castro’s passing.

Yesterday, Motley tried to visit Maldonado at his last known detention site, Havana’s El Combinado del Este maximum security prison. Motley was barred from seeing Maldonado, and was denied access to basic information regarding official charges.

This Monday, Human Rights Foundation (HRF) submitted an individual complaint to the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), requesting that they initiate proceedings to investigate the arbitrary arrest and ongoing detention of Danilo Maldonado Machado, also known as El Sexto.

In March, Herrera — a surgeon at the Calixto García University Hospital in Havana and a deputy editor for the Hablemos Press independent news agency — was barred from leaving the country to attend a human rights conference in the Czech Republic.

El Sexto has been detained three times and held for three to five hours each time since his return to Cuba earlier this month.

The appeal requested that the rapporteur call on the Cuban government to provide an official and comprehensive explanation regarding the state’s treatment of Rosa María Payá.

In a meeting with staff members from the U.N. Special Rapporteur’s office, HRF presented the conclusions of its July 2015 legal report, which strongly suggests that Cuban dissident Oswaldo Payá’s 2012 death was an extrajudicial execution carried out by the Cuban government.

El Sexto, a Cuban graffiti artist and activist, will showcase his work in an exhibition entitled “PORK,” which will take place at Market Gallery in South Beach, Miami, from February 26 to March 16.

In December, Maldonado was arbitrarily arrested and accused of criminal defamation for “insulting” the leaders of the Cuban revolution.

HRF volunteers filmed this only a few months prior to Pollán’s abrupt and mysterious death in a Havana hospital.

El Sexto was arrested on December 25, 2014 while he was on his way to put on a performance art piece called “Rebelión en la Granja”—the title in Spanish of George Orwell’s classic Animal Farm—which included two pigs decorated with the names Fidel and Raúl.

The Human Rights Foundation (HRF) strongly condemns the harassment and threats made by Cuban state security agents against Gorki Águila, lead singer of the anti-dictatorship rock band Porno para Ricardo.