The Cuban Police found the remains of the 21-year-old Dairon Quiala Artiles in a house located in the Campo 14 area, in the Havana municipality of El Cerro. The authorities have not offered an official version of the death of Quiala, who had been missing for almost a month, although several users of social networks have identified the alleged murderer.
Quiala’s family, who reported the young man missing on Monday, March 6, stated that they had last seen him in the La Güinera neighborhood, in the municipality of San Miguel del Padrón. This Tuesday, after several weeks of unsuccessful search and claims to the Ministry of the Interior by his relatives, the Facebook profile Cuba has a voice assured that Quiala had been found dead.
Since his disappearance, fragmented and even contradictory versions have been circulating about the reasons why the young man could have been murdered and about the involvement of the alleged perpetrator, with whose daughter Quiala still maintained a certain friendship, according to counted to cybercubto an uncle of the boy, Denis Enrique Garbey.
According to Garbey, the alleged murderer committed suicide about to be confronted by the Police. Although he does not clarify what was the reason for which he attacked Quiala, he says that he mutilated and burned the body, and then buried it in the backyard of a house that the young man had bought.
Following the police inaction, the family decided to conduct an investigation on their own.
On April 1, the Police identified the remains of the victim. According to Garbey, her nephew no longer had a love relationship with the alleged murderer’s daughter, although he did help the woman support a girl from a previous partner.
Another uncle of the victim, who calls himself on Facebook Omo Yalorde, wrote an open letter to Miguel Díaz-Canel demanding justice for the murder of the young man and affirming –in contradiction to the version of events offered by Garbey– that those responsible “remain free”. The publication also denounced the nightmare that the family went through to claim the search for the young man from the Ministry of the Interior.
At the beginning of March, when they went to the El Capri police station, in Arroyo Naranjo, to file a complaint for the disappearance, they were not heard until the next day and after much “anguish and despair.”
“We had setbacks with the Police for improper dealings,” Yalorde said. Following the police inaction, the family decided to conduct an investigation on their own. Ariadna Quiala, another of the young man’s aunts, informed the independent press that the family had been accused of contempt at the La Güinera station for the mere fact of demanding new information about the young man.
Yalorde assures that, during the search for the family, they also went to the house of the father of the ex-girlfriend -where the young man had been seen-, who attended them by providing them with coffee and tobacco. They also explored the surroundings of Campo 14 until, finally, the authorities found the body.
“We had setbacks with the Police for improper dealings”
The escalation of violence in Cuba has been recognized by various reports, such as the one from the Cuban Conflict Observatory (OCC), which highlights citizen insecurity and denounces the existence of gangs “of adolescents and children”.
The Miami-based NGO documented 10 murders in different provinces in the first three months of the year. Most of the deaths occurred during a theft of a phone, gold chain, or motorcycle.
Victim, precisely, of an attempted theft of a cell phone, Lester Domínguez Ortiz, 17, is seriously injured after being attacked with a machete on March 21 in San Germán, Holguín province. Dennis Domínguez, the minor’s uncle and who shares his medical status on his Facebook profile, counted this Thursday that the young man is still in a delicate health condition and connected to artificial ventilation equipment, in addition to having pneumonia.
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