The organization Prisoners Defenders (PD), based in Madrid, has presented this Thursday a complaint in which he documents the systematic violation of Cuban criminal law itself in the application of the law to the protesters of 11J. In a 47-page report, the NGO uses legal arguments to analyze the “structural patterns that violate due process and effective defense” in the Cuban procedural system.
The document affirms that almost 300 cases have been analyzed without finding a single exception to the arbitrary application of the legislation “for which thousands of families in Cuba suffer, just for having expressed their feelings, desires and needs, with one or several of their members in prison, tortured and with sentences that in not a few cases are counted for tens of years”.
The organization considers that, taking into account the arguments, all those incarcerated must be released immediately, in addition to ceasing the ill-treatment they suffer in prison, and the threats and harassment of their family and friends.
The organization considers that, taking into account the arguments, all those imprisoned should be released immediately, in addition to ceasing the ill-treatment they suffer in prison
PD will send the documentation to the United Nations Human Rights Council so that the body, based in Geneva, “requires information from the regime about the facts and violations denounced, so that, after the appropriate procedures, it agrees (…) to request to the Republic of Cuba the reinstatement of the situation of freedom of the victims”.
To this end, the NGO attaches a list with the names of 279 people sentenced in Cuba, consigning in a table whether in each case one of the seven patterns of violation of law systematized on the Island has been breached: precautionary measures without judicial protection, absence of independent defense lawyers, lack of judicial independence and impartiality, violation of guarantees in testimonies and expert opinions, arrest and prosecution for the exercise of fundamental rights, criminal types used that violate fundamental criminal principles and use of summary procedure and/or military court.
Almost all those affected have suffered the first 6 violations, while the seventh only applied to 45 people.
PD recalls that in Cuba there is no separation of powers and bases it neither more nor less than on the statements of the President of the Republic, Miguel Díaz-Canel, who in September 2022 said verbatim: “In Cuba you do not work with the division of powers. We work with the Unity of Power, through organs that have different functions”.
“In Cuba you do not work with the division of powers. You work with the Unity of Power, through bodies that have different functions”
This fact, verified by the highest leader of the country, allows the State to “retain control over all the apparatuses, institutions and “mass organizations”, leaving to its discretion, without any kind of control or limitation, all the actions and decisions that could influence the State model, that is, taking away national sovereignty from the Cuban people”.
For the organization, this unified power was used from all the institutions to punish and repress the protesters, violating fundamental rights that are in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of which Cuba is a signatory.
The report also points out the application of the most severe crimes of the Penal Code to protesters in Cuba and radically rejects that those convicted have committed sedition or an attack. It also considers that the agents who were injured were not “protected for acting in the exercise of their function”, since they did so following an order to repress the protesters with active violence.
“Cuban doctrine and jurisprudence itself has been precise in that the crimes of disobedience, contempt, attack or resistance do not qualify when the action of the agent or authority against the person turns out to be an excessive and illegal act, far from the full exercise of their functions. , especially when it is carried out in violation of said functions”, the text highlights.
Other procedural violations analyzed are detention times, which exceed those provided for by law, the lack of communication with the judge in the early stages of investigation, the instrumentalization of the Prosecutor’s Office and 100% of the magistrates who intervened in processes or the use of pandemic measures to increase crimes and penalties, among others.
“From the analysis of the preparatory phase files and the sentences of the cases of documented political prisoners, in addition to those present on the current list of 1,077 political prisoners maintained by Prisoners Defenders, the imputation of 587 crimes of public disorder was determined, 375 of contempt, 355 of attack, 209 of sedition, 46 of resistance, 35 of disobedience, 50 of incitement to commit a crime, in relation to the above, and 11 of pre-criminal social dangerousness, distributed among 1,046 people,” summarizes the text.
“I personally think that we need to suspend this agreement because in this situation, and seeing the collusion with Vladimir Putin, we can see how the world is divided, where are the democratic countries”
During the presentation of the report this Thursday, at the headquarters of the General Council of Spanish Lawyers (Madrid), the president of the organization, Javier Larrondo, was accompanied by other jurists, although he highlighted the presence of Dita Charanzová, vice president of the European Parliament, that he took the opportunity to ask the European Union to break the Political Dialogue and Cooperation Agreement, signed with the Island in 2016 to put an end to the previous Common Position that, for the European Executive, had not given results.
“I personally think that we need to suspend this agreement because in this situation, and seeing the collusion with Vladimir Putin, we can see how the world is divided, where the democratic countries are,” he stated before warning that “in this context We cannot sustain this agreement.”
For his part, Larrondo “endorsed” Pope Francis’ request to release the 9/11 prisoners and regretted that the authoritarian model wants to “impose itself on the world.” “We are in a situation in which this type of state model, Vladimir Putin, the Castros, Iran… It is the model that they want to impose in Ukraine, in Europe and, if possible, in the rest of the world. The president of Cuba is a clear ally of Putin in his world imperialist strategy (…) and has congratulated him for the annexation of Ukrainian territories,” he clarified.
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