Cuban opposition figure arrested three days before banned protest

Cuban dissident, journalist and human rights campaigner Guillermo Farinas was arrested Friday, his mother told, three days before opposition figures plan to hold a protest that has been banned by the government.

"They arrested him today. They took him around 2:10 pm," Farina's mother Alicia Hernandez said.

She said her son is on antibiotics because of a urinary tract infection. 

"An ambulance and two police patrols came and took him to the Arnaldo Milian Castro Hospital," Hernandez said.

"They told me that tomorrow a prosecutor will visit him to charge him, but we don't know what for."

Farinas, 59, is a psychologist by training and has worked as an independent journalist and human rights activist. He won the European Parliament's 2010 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. 

Over the last 20-something years, Farinas has undertaken 23 hunger strikes to protest the Cuban government, considerably damaging his health.

He is a member of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, the most active political opposition group in the country. 

Farinas' arrest comes before a planned opposition-led demonstration set for Monday to demand the release of  political prisoners in Cuba. The gathering has been banned by the island's communist government. Organizers plan to go ahead with it anyway.