Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White, is detained in Cuba for the second time in a week

Cuban opposition leader Ladies in White, Berta Solerwas arrested this Sunday in Havana, according to her husband, a former political prisoner. Angel Moya.

Moya said Soler’s arrest came after he left the opposition group’s headquarters in Havana’s Lawton neighborhood.

His arrest represents the 97th number of arrests against the Ladies in White, according to the complaint he posted on social media, accompanied by a photo.

Last Sunday, Soler was also arrested – in the same place – and taken to a police unit in the municipality of Cotorro in Havana to be released two days later.

The activist then denounced, through a video on Facebook, that during the confinement she had been threatened by a State Security agent with “arrest without return” during the first outing she had made to demonstrate for the release of political prisoners.

Members of the Ladies in White from the provinces of Matanzas, Holguin, Villa Clara and Havana were arrested almost every Sunday. since in January 2022 they decided to go out again to attend mass – after a break due to the pandemic – as a sign of protest to demand the release of political prisoners, including those from the July 11, 2021 protests.

Soler said in an interview with Efe in June, that in recent times “repression has intensified” against the female community.

The group was founded in 2003 by a group of women close to the 75 dissidents and independent journalists sentenced to heavy prison terms during the period of repression known as the “Black Spring.”

From then on, this women’s movement made up of wives, mothers and relatives of the condemned identified themselves by always dressing in white and by carrying out Sunday marches after attending mass in a Catholic church.

In 2005, the Ladies in White received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Conscience from the European Parliament..