José Bravo Navarro, 33, died two days after receiving extra-penal leave in critical condition.
MADRID, Spain.- José Bravo Navarro, a 33-year-old resident of La Patera (Santiago de Cuba), died in the early hours of November 19 at the Ambrosio Grillo Hospital, two days after the prison authorities granted him an extra-penal license due to his critical condition.
His death was initially reported by the independent journalist Yosmany Mayeta Labrada and later confirmed by the Cubalex Legal Advice Center.
Bravo Navarro was first held in the Mar Verde prison, where he began to have a persistent cough, abdominal pain, extreme weight loss and physical exhaustion. He also suffered frequent diarrhea, dehydration, and progressive weakness during this period.
After his condition worsened, he was transferred to Boniato prison, which has a hospital facility. There, according to family testimonies cited by the journalist, he did not receive timely medical attention despite presenting obvious signs of tuberculosis, heart complications and kidney problems.
When his health was already serious, Bravo Navarro was admitted to the prison ward of the Ambrosio Grillo Hospital, in the town of Cobre. It was then that the authorities decided to grant him the so-called extra-penal freedom. However, this measure came “only a few days before his death,” said Mayeta, who described the decision as late and denounced that “there was no body to save.”
The young man died in the early hours of this Wednesday. His body was transferred to the Santiago de Cuba funeral home, where he will be buried this Thursday morning. His relatives maintain that he could have survived if medical care had been provided in time and denounce “neglect, delay and medical silence.”
Cubalex, which classified the event as a new death in state custody, recalled that these cases show “a sustained pattern of negligence and failures in the protection of life within Cuban prisons” and stressed that the State fails to fulfill its obligations when it only intervenes in terminal phases of the deterioration of inmates.
Pattern of preventable deaths in Cuban prisons
The case of José Bravo Navarro joins a long list of deaths associated with medical negligence, delays in care and prolonged deterioration during confinement, according to family members and human rights organizations.
So far in 2025, Cubalex has recorded 38 deaths of people deprived of liberty, including that of Bravo Navarro. The figure is reaffirmed by the Cuban Prison Documentation Center (CDPC) which, in addition, in its recently presented annual report, reported at least 60 deaths in Cuban prisons between March 2024 and March 2025.
The CDPC adds that, in some of those 60 deaths, the relatives were not able to access the bodies or the forensic reports, violating international protocols applicable to potentially unlawful deaths.
When presenting the report, the organization denounced: “The Cuban prison system is today a space of human degradation and political repression. These are not isolated failures, but a structural policy of punishment and silence that requires a firm international response.”
In March 2024, Cubalex presented an investigation on deaths in custody in Cuba, in which he concluded that this phenomenon reflects a systemic human rights crisis. The document noted that prisons and detention centers are characterized by overcrowding, lack of hygiene and a shortage of basic needs such as drinking water, ventilation and adequate food, which increases the risk of preventable diseases and deaths. Likewise, he denounced the poor medical care, with delays or refusals in treatments and inadequate responses to emergencies, which have led to multiple preventable deaths.
