In Cuba, mothers are decrying the jailing of their children jailed for protesting. Prosecutors on the other hand are asking for up an overly harsh, unjustified and unnecessary 23 year prison sentence for these minors. This article by Jorge Carrasco is published by NBC News. Here is an excerpt:

Yudinela Castro has seen her son eight times in the past six months, but in a subdued voice says she would have preferred not to have seen him.

“It would have been better not to have visited him in prison, because he came out full of scabies, with a bad smell and a hellish color. He had not been able to bathe for days,” the mother said in a phone call from Havana.

Castro said her son, Rowland Castillo, 17, was arrested in the middle of the street and interrogated without the presence of his parents or a lawyer. He was transferred to an adult prison just days after the July 11 protests, when thousands of Cubans like him demanded “freedom” in cities across the island during the largest demonstration in six decades of communism.

Read the full story here.