The secretly shot video shows an unusual glimpse of life inside Cuba’s most notorious prison, Combinado del Este.
An Indian native and prisoner, “Dalvinder Singh Japal,” shows viewers the outdoor courtyard where inmates are allowed one hour each weekday.
Japal also goes inside, revealing the dismal conditions in a deteriorating building where sewage leaks from the walls, inmates eat substandard food, and hang their handwashed clothes from bars.
A total of 10 videos that were recorded in January, smuggled off the island and posted on the blog Cuba por Dentro are drawing attention to the deplorable conditions Cuban prisoners live with.
Albert Mueller knows that life. Fidel Castro’s regime threw him behind bars in 1961 for wanting different leadership.
Mueller says the unsanitary, deteriorating, unstable conditions are bad enough. But it is the inhumanity, and physical and mental torture, that is worst of all, he tells NBC 6.
"I remember. I spent 15 years in prison,” he said. “My first day in prison, I have to suffer a simulation of a firing squad.”
It was “a very bad experience,” one in which he suffered a lot, Mueller said.
“I lost my parents. But, you know, life is beautiful,” he said.
