The Municipal Court of Habana del Este signed this Tuesday sentences of up to eight years of imprisonment for ten protesters in the protests of July 11, 2021. To the defendants, among whom was the professor Pedro Albert Sanchezthe Prosecutor’s Office attributed to them the crimes of public disorder, attack, resistance and contempt.
Although in most cases the defense lawyers requested the acquittal of the defendants, the Prosecutor’s Office insisted that all the facts had been proven by the competent authorities and prepared a version that appears in the trial record, to which he had access. 14ymedio.
On 11J, at two in the afternoon, the minutes refer, the defendants “felt motivated by the various calls promulgated on social networks” and challenged the “social isolation measures” during the coronavirus pandemic, with the “evident purpose ” of provoking a public disturbance from the Havana municipality of Regla to Guanabacoa.
Without skimping on adjectives, the Prosecutor’s Office states that the defendants used the “discomfort caused in the town by shortages of food products and medicines” to “alarm the neighbors, passers-by, and business managers.” In the midst of the tumult, he affirms, the defendant Marlon Paz Bravo – sentenced to six years in prison for attack and public disorder – came into contact with the patrol in the vicinity of La Cotorra park.
The Prosecutor’s Office states that the defendants used the “discomfort caused in the town by shortages of food products and medicines” to “alarm the neighbors, passers-by, and business managers.”
There, they point out, Paz Bravo and other unidentified people stoned the police vehicle and caused damage: a stone hit the windshield and a dent in the right door, for which the Court will force him to pay 295 pesos. Hidden behind the bodywork, the agents, regrets the sentence, failed to “establish order.”
Jandys González Mujica was also accused of insulting and “hitting an official of the Communist Party, Yosbel Escalona, with his hands on the head”, until a police officer intervened and applied “the spray technique”, that is, he applied tear gas to him and his companions. The officer himself, Yoandris Rodríguez, was the one who identified and facilitated the arrest of González Mujica.
Other defendants, such as Yerandy Acosta and Armando Aguilar Nevot, are accused by the authorities of driving an electric motorcycle from which they shouted “Follow me, join me!”, “Up town!” and “Castro’s government is over!”. The inhabitants of Guanabacoa, they continue, responded to the call, an act that for the Prosecutor’s Office “intensified the noise” and caused an annoying noise of “cauldrons and instruments.”
The remaining defendants –Yamilka Pérez, Roxana Perdomo, Maikel González Mura, Gabriel de la Concepción Portal, Osvaldo Canto, Jorge Carbonell and Pedro Albert Sánchez– are charged with the disconcerting crime of “tarnishing the image” of Díaz-Canel, in addition to “shouting derogatory phrases against him” and “denigrating his masculinity” and that of other leaders. De la Concepción Portal, the text refers to with indignation, once detained insisted on “vilifying and insulting the president” and once again doubting “his masculinity and his public image”, to the scandal of Police officer Henry Sánchez .
Despite admitting that the defendants, in most cases, “maintain normal relations with the neighbours”, have “calm behavior”, are not “problematic or handsome (sic)”, the Prosecutor’s Office does not hesitate to accept as true the testimonies of multiple “eyewitnesses”, police officers, informants, state transport drivers and Party and Government officials.
Despite admitting that the defendants “maintain normal relations with the neighbors” and have “calm behavior”, the Prosecutor’s Office does not hesitate to accept the testimonies of multiple “eyewitnesses” as true.
All, affirms the sentence, agreed in his account “categorically”, of which the Court did not doubt at any time, which used the videos published on social networks during 11J and the days that followed. “The facts declared proven are constitutive of the crime of public disorder,” the Court settled, to which it later added the charges of resistance, contempt, attack and insults to senior political officials.
A long section of the sentence is dedicated to justifying how the accused contributed to destabilize the “achievements of the Revolution and the tranquility of the citizens”, responding to the call of “counterrevolutionary groups”, which shows, according to the text, that all the accused are people who “do not have clear principles”, in addition to being “lack of character and scruples and especially without common sense”.
The court’s decision was to sentence Paz Bravo and González Mura to six years in prison, Pérez Naranjo and Perdomo Quesada to four years (replaced by correctional work without internment), Canto Piedra to five years in correctional without internment, Aguilar Nevot and Acosta Jiménez to two years, under the same conditions, and Professor Albert Sánchez –in consideration of his advanced age– to five years of correctional without internment.
The greatest sentence fell on Jandys González Mujica, with a joint sentence of eight years –six for attack and three for public disorder– in a prison chosen by the Ministry of the Interior.
None of those who must comply with correctional work will have the right to promotions, salary promotions and will always have to work in the “lowest paid or qualified position”, in “different working conditions”, and away from “management” functions. , administration and teaching”.
This Wednesday the sentence of the Provincial Court of Havana to another 15 protesters whose joint sentence totaled 75 years was made public. The arguments of the Prosecutor’s Office were similar and were even attributed to minors such as Jonathan Torres, who was 17 years old at the time of the events.
The 9/11 trials, which have had an exemplary character from the beginning, were discussed last week by the Cuban Minister of Justice, Óscar Silvera, in a meeting with ambassadors of the European Union. During the meeting, Silvera reminded diplomats that any pardon or amnesty for the 9/11 protesters was out of the question.
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