A Protestant pastor is in prison in Cuba’s Camagüey province after state security agents arrested him on Sept. 26 and charged him with disobedience over a public prayer event he had planned. Maikel Pupo Velázquez is held at La Cerámica Roja Prison outside Camagüey City, the United Kingdom-based group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) reported.
Agents of Cuba’s Department of State Security (DSE) held him at their local headquarters for nine days with no outside contact before the transfer. CSW said the charge was a reprisal for his effort to organize the gathering and called the detention arbitrary. His wife was not told of the arrest and learned of it only after the pastor’s stepfather went to where he was being held.
Pupo Velázquez leads an unregistered congregation, the Sacred Blessing Word of Fire Church. Officials summoned him on Sept. 25 and ordered him to stay away from Cándido Gonzalez Morales Stadium, the planned venue. They said he would go to jail if anyone gathered there. Sources told CSW he answered the summons in person and then called the event off.
Worried that some young people had not heard, he went to the stadium to send them home. Officers from the DSE’s Technical Investigations Department rode up on a motorcycle and took him into custody near the gates. Authorities had detained the pastor before, in July 2025, after he tried to bring medicine and other supplies to relatives of two political prisoners.
Many young people converted to Christianity at a youth event he led in late August, and more than 20 of them then held nightly prayer meetings at the church for a month. Relatives said his 16-year-old daughter is being treated in the heart ward at Eduardo Agramonte Piña Pediatric Hospital.