Havana/Osmani Deroncelé, a 50-year-old common prisoner who was serving his sentence in the Boniato prison, in Santiago de Cuba, died this Tuesday in conditions of extreme vulnerability and without adequate medical care. The Cubalex legal advice center reported this Wednesday that the man was held in cell 34 of Detachment 17, where he remained alone.
According to the NGO report, Deroncelé, originally from the Santiago municipality of El Salao, suffered from psychiatric pathologies associated with the loss of impulse control and had an advanced state of malnutrition, in addition to not receiving specialized medical attention or the treatment that his condition required.
“Due to the visible deterioration of his health, other inmates avoided sharing a cell with him, for fear that, if he died, the authorities would hold them responsible,” the organization states in its report. For this reason, the man died in total abandonment, without timely medical attention or transfer to a hospital, despite the seriousness of his condition, the NGO denounces. And he adds: “Subsequently, the prison authorities would have restricted communication with the outside world to prevent his death from becoming known.”
“Every person deprived of liberty is under the custody and protection of the State. A death in prison is not an isolated event”
The NGO holds the authorities responsible for the death, noting that “every person deprived of liberty is under the custody and protection of the State. A death in prison is not an isolated event: it directly compromises state responsibility, especially when vulnerability was evident and no measures were adopted to protect their life.”
The Boniato prison, where Deroncelé was imprisoned, has been denounced on numerous occasions by Cubalex and other organizations for “neglect, unhealthiness and lack of medical care,” which continue to “claim lives.”
The prison has also been pointed out by relatives of inmates for the alarming conditions in which they are kept, in addition to subjecting them to a regime of maximum severity, which has caused the inmates to die from hunger or tuberculosis. “The food is insufficient and inadequate. They only receive rice soup or donkey banana, without regular access to a main dish, which is provided to them sporadically,” the NGO stressed in a report in March of last year.
This would be the third recorded death of a prisoner in the custody of the Cuban State in 2026
This would be the third recorded death of a prisoner in the custody of the Cuban State in 2026. The previous one was that of Luis Miguel Oña Jiménez, a young political prisoner from 11J, who died three days after being released on extra-penal leave, when his health was already critical. Although it did not occur inside a penitentiary center, organizations such as Prisoners Defenders (PD) and the Cuban Prison Documentation Center (CDPC) have held the authorities responsible for the death.
Oña Jiménez was held in the Panama prison for HIV patients, in Güines, Mayabeque province, where he suffered cerebral ischemia (reduced blood flow to a part of the body), which caused him to be unable to move his mouth, hands or feet. He was later transferred to the Julio Trigo López hospital in Havana. According to Prisoners Defenders, he was “evicted” there and sent home on extra-penal leave, where he died shortly after. Despite his condition, he did not receive adequate medical care after such a serious neurological event, nor the treatment corresponding to his underlying conditions.
The 27-year-old was one of the hundreds of protesters arrested in the massive protests recorded on July 11, 2021. For this reason, Oña Jiménez was serving a 12-year sentence for “sedition.”
According to Cubalex figures, in 2025 at least 41 deaths occurred in Cuban prisons, linked to inhumane conditions of confinement, poor nutrition, lack of adequate medical care and diseases without timely treatment. “The lack of state transparency prevents us from measuring the real scope of this crisis,” the organization accuses. Meanwhile, according to CDPC numbers, which has been counting since 2023, from that year until now, 119 people have died in prison.
