Dropper and failing to meet their own deadlines, the Cuban courts are handing out new sentences that provoke outrage among the relatives of the July 11 protesters, not only because of the number of years in prison, but also because of the motivations invoked by the judges.
The condemnation of Maikel Puig Bergolla to 20 years in prison last week for “instigation to commit a crime” plus “two crimes of attempted murder” for his participation in 11J in Güines, province of Mayebeque, is one of the most severe taken by Cuban courts in the last months. Instead, the sentence made public last Friday against the brothers Nadir and Jorge Martín Perdomo, both from San José de las Lajas, is perhaps one of the most surprising in terms of the motivations invoked by the judges.
The court also ruled that Puig Bergolla should “repair the material damage caused to the Ministry of the Interior in the sum of thirty-seven pesos and twenty-one cents.” Initially, the Prosecutor’s Office asked for 25 years in a trial that began on January 12.
“This sentence is the culmination of a totally absurd, disrespectful, humiliating play”
The ruling states that the accused, who “was enjoying the benefit of parole,” gathered together with others in the Asbel or Las Yaguas neighborhood of the Güines municipality and “began to move down the center of the street” to the area of the central park of the town. They indicate that once there “they joined hundreds of people” and “in frank disrespect to the President of the Republic” they shouted slogans such as “Díaz-Canel singao” and “pinga police.” In addition to Bergolla they point out that he encouraged the neighbors to join “the walk”.
Another sentence known last Friday was that of Nadir and Jorge Martín Perdomo, both from San José de las Lajas, Mayabeque. Signed on February 8 by judges Sergio Rodríguez Garcés, Omar Castro Castro and Roberto Viltres Gónzalez, it sentences the brothers to six and eight years in prison, respectively, for the crimes of “attack”, “disrespect” and “public disorder”. .
Although both had a reduction in the sentence with respect to the request of the Prosecutor’s Office -Nadir, from 8 to 6 years and Jorge, from 10 to 8-, the relatives are outraged. For Betty Guerra Perdomo, a cousin of the defendants, the sentence against them is “an aberration” that she “cannot celebrate or thank.”
“This sentence is the culmination of a totally absurd, disrespectful, humiliating play,” he told this newspaper. “Everything that has happened with the case of my cousins from the beginning is an aberration until now, I do not want to say that it is the end because I cling to the hope that with strength and struggle we can change it.”
Guerra says that the trial, held in Quivicán last January 25, and points out that last week the brothers were separated from prison. “I still believe that every day they have spent there is a year of life violently stolen and, therefore, the fight is going to be for complete freedom,” she argued.
Such behaviors, collected by the sentence and that are described as “total disrespect”, were chanting “with euphoria” “profane and vulgar” words such as “pinga police” and “Díaz-Canel singao”
In the “proven facts” section of the judgment, to which he had access 14ymedio, It is reported that the defendants, on 11J, “decided to circumvent” the measures dictated by the Ministry of Public Health for the covid-19 pandemic, “provoking in that same period of thousands of infections and deaths of people daily” and that, “Even foreseeing the evils that their conduct would bring,” they joined “a crowd of people” on 54th Street in San José de las Lajas.
The demonstration, the text continues, “reached other individuals when, at the call of the defendants, they joined the comparsa who, holding on to cauldrons, metal objects and the horns of motorcycles, created enormous noises, which put nearby neighbors on alert. and even far from the indicated routes due to their improper way of externalizing their unprecedented behavior in the territory”.
Such behaviors, collected by the sentence and that are described as “total disrespect”, were chanting “with euphoria” “coarse and vulgar” words such as “pinga police” and “Díaz-Canel singao”, along with “homeland and life”, in addition to making “gross claims to the protective commissioners of the place” and snatching a Cuban flag for a moment from an agent who was participating in a government counter-demonstration.
At one point, the text indicates that “larger scales” were reached at the place of the protest, since “stones were thrown at establishments”, although it clarifies: “without the implicated Martín Perdomo brothers taking part in these episodes “.
Even so, the brothers were sentenced, with the aggravating circumstance that the events occurred “at the precise moments of the covid pandemic crisis.”
As for the defense version, the text indicates that the defense attorney, Reynier Brito López, “estimated as the only thesis that the legal qualifications imputed to his clients do not constitute a crime and he sought the free acquittal of both.”
For the mother of the brothers, Marta Perdomo, the sentence of her children has been unfair, and to this is added the pain of having to go from one prison to another: “Nadir is in Melena del Sur and Jorgito, in Quivicán,” she says. . “They separated me from my children by telling such a big lie that Nadir had asked to separate from his brother. I am going to complain to the head of prisons to ask that they be together again because the economic situation is difficult and it is not easy to pay for cars for two different places.
In addition, she announced that she is going to take care of appealing the sentence and although she is aware that it will be “practically for pleasure”, she will do all the pertinent procedures, including delivering “letters to Díaz-Canel for the torture they did to Nadir.”
“I’m going to continue asking for freedom while blood runs through my veins, it was unfair,” concludes Perdomo. “They are playing with us but I have to keep fighting for my children.”
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