Madrid/The lawyer who defends the former Minister of Economy Alejandro Gil Fernandezdetained in the high security prison of Guanajay (Artemisa) and accused of multiple crimes, the most serious of them espionage, is Abel Solá López. As defined by the former official’s sister, Maria Victoria Gilwhich confirms his identity, he is the “best criminal lawyer in Cuba at the moment”, although this is no guarantee in the face of the overwhelming apparatus of the regime. He knows it because he studied law with him in Havana and graduated with honors.
As verified 14ymedio Based on public documents, Solá López, who has his law firm in the municipality of Playa, has intervened as a defender in several trials linked to crimes against State security. One of them, the one who sentenced, in 2017, Alina López Miyares and her husband, Félix Martín Milanés Fajardoto 13 and 17 years in prison, respectively, for espionage.
That process, carried out on October 2 in the Courtroom of the Marianao Military Court, was behind closed doors and “without access to the relatives of the accused.” This is precisely what Alejandro Gil’s daughter wants to avoid, Laura María Gil Gonzálezwho has demanded, in several Facebook posts, a fair, public and transparent trial for his father.
In 2021, the defense carried out by Solá López requested conditional release for López Miyares for humanitarian reasons.
In 2021, the defense carried out by Solá López requested conditional release for López Miyares for humanitarian reasons, based on the legislation of the Island’s own military courts, which provide for this possibility when one third of the sanction is served if the inmate has no criminal record and maintains good behavior in prison.
The request was granted the following yearalthough women continue to appear as political prisoners by independent organizations such as Prisoners Defenders. She had been detained in January 2017 at the Havana airport, when she was preparing to travel to Miami, very shortly after her husband, Milanés Fajardo, a former Cuban diplomat who had worked at the UN in New York, where they both met.
His story was picked up by various media, including The New York Times in a long report. For the Cuban Government, the American newspaper said, “she is a traitor and a spy who revealed the names of Cuban operatives to the FBI,” but “for her family and her defenders in the United States, a naive woman who was deceived by an old love – a Cuban diplomat and spy – and then deceived again by American intelligence agents.”
Another defended by Abel Solá was, in December 2020, Carlos Armando Benítez Matos, in a case judged by the Chamber for Crimes against State Security. That resolution was not made public.
The lawyer has also shown his experience, for example, in legal comments to sentences
The lawyer has also shown his experience, for example, in legal comments to sentences, such as the one that convicted, in 2021, “RPM, YGM, OGR and DRVS” for “money laundering, falsification of public documents of a continuing nature, illicit economic activities, illegal trafficking of national currency, foreign currency, metals and precious stones of a continuing nature and smuggling.”
All of them are similar crimes for which Alejandro Gil Fernández is accused, according to the statement from the Prosecutor’s Office issued last Friday: “espionage, acts detrimental to economic activity or contracting, embezzlement, bribery, falsification of public documents, tax evasion, influence peddling, money laundering, violation of the rules for the protection of classified documents and theft and damage of documents or other objects in official custody.”
This text was the first news given by the former minister’s regime since, on March 7, 2024, a criminal case against the official was officially announced, in a brief note signed by the president himself in which, without further details, “serious errors committed in the performance of his duties” were alleged.
Dismissed from his position the previous month, he had until then been not only Minister of Economy and Planning, but also Deputy Prime Minister and right-hand man of Miguel Díaz-Canel.
