Washington DC - The US on Friday announced for the first time sanctions against Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel for his role "in the Cuban regime's brutality toward the Cuban people."

The State Department was "restricting visas" for the president and other high-ranking government officials, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an X post on the fourth anniversary of historic anti-government protests in Cuba.

Other officials sanctioned included Defense Minister Alvaro Lopez Miera and Interior Minister Lazaro Alberto Alvarez Casas.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez slammed the latest measures on X, saying that President Donald Trump's administration cannot "bend the will of its people or its leaders."

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The State Department also added the "Torre K," a 42-story hotel in Havana, to its restricted list of entities "to prevent US dollars from funding the Cuban regime's repression."

The establishment, recently inaugurated in a central area of the Cuban capital, sparked criticism of the government's huge investment in new hotels at a time when tourism is declining.

"While the Cuban people suffer shortages of food, water, medicine, and electricity, the regime lavishes money on its insiders," Rubio said.

Rubio also took to X to accuse Cuba of torturing dissident leader Jose Daniel Ferrer, four years after the government crushed massive protests.

"The United States demands immediate proof of life and the release of all political prisoners," Rubio said.

Hundreds of people were arrested in the July 2021 demonstrations, the largest since the Cuban revolution in the 1950s. They resulted in one death and dozens of wounded.

Ferrer, leader of the dissident group Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), was among 553 prisoners released in January after former US President Joe Biden agreed to remove the island from the blacklist of countries sponsoring terrorism.

But at the end of April, his parole was revoked, prompting criticism from Washington, which has put Cuba back on the blacklist after Trump returned to power.