MADRID – A Spanish journalist, behind bars in Cuba since July 2010 on charges of corrupting minors after he filmed a hidden-camera report about underage prostitution on the island, will soon be freed, his wife told Efe on Monday.
The release of Sebastian Martinez Ferrate is being secured thanks to negotiations undertaken by Madrid with the Castro regime, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo informed Maria Angeles Sola on Saturday.
The wife of the journalist and businessman told Efe on Monday that her husband will be expelled from the Communist-ruled island and will not have to serve in Spain the seven-year sentence imposed on him last August by a Cuban court.
Sola gave the news about her husband on Sunday by telephone.
She said she had no idea when he will be allowed to leave for Spain, though she hoped and believed it would be as soon as possible.
Martinez Ferrate was arrested in July 2010 upon arrival in Havana on a business trip as director general of a Spanish hotel chain.
The businessman-journalist had been on the island in 2008 doing a hidden-camera report on underage prostitution that aired on a Spanish television channel.
In August 2011, he was tried and sentenced to seven years in prison for corruption of minors and procurement.
Martinez Ferrate, who has always protested his innocence, has been in prison in the municipality of Guines, some 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Havana.
Due to the prisoner’s delicate state of health, Spain’s then-foreign minister, Trinidad Jimenez, got together last year with Cuban counterpart Bruno Rodriguez to try and find a way to free him for “humanitarian reasons.”
The new minister, Garcia-Margallo, resumed the contacts after taking office.
“He’s taken it as a personal responsibility,” Sola said of the procedures undertaken by the new minister. EFE
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