The United Nations (UN) accused the Cuban regime of committing serious violations of due process against the political prisoners of 11Jas the massive protests of July 11, 2021 on the island are known.
six mandates They made reference, through a letter sent to the dictatorship of Miguel Díaz-Canel, to seven violations of due process that invalidate all criminal proceedings of the more than 1,500 political prisoners on the island in the last three yearsin addition to qualifying as “arbitrary” and of “forced disappearance” their detention processes.
- Deprivation of liberty without judicial protection: It is carried out by investigative police officers called “Instructors“, “figure outside the Investigating Judge“, as indicated in the letter of the Mandates, and subsequently by local prosecutors for an indefinite period, as indicated, “from six months, without more than the approval of the Attorney General”.
- Lack of independent lawyers, because all lawyers are obliged, by Law, to depend on the Ministry of Justice. The Mandates have been clear: “The lack of an independent legal profession in Cuba has been denounced on numerous occasions by the United Nations WGAD and the United Nations Committee Against Torture.” In both cases, it was the NGO Prisoners Defenders the complainant, based on the 2019 opinion “La Abogacía en Cuba”, by Prisoners Defenders, which was submitted in the complaints adopted in the CAT in 2022, and much earlier in the WGAD in cases 63/2019 and 63/2021.
- Dependence of prosecutors and judges on political power: The Cuban Law leaves no room for doubt, as the NGO demonstrated in the complaint, and thus, the Mandates have adopted and referenced it in their letter.
- Experts and witnesses of the State as the only source of accusation: Regarding the first, by Law, it is not possible to participate as an expert in any trial against the State without “the competent authority” requesting it. The expert opinion is always on the part, but on one side, of the Cuban regime. Regarding witnesses, Prisoners Defenders has reviewed hundreds of sentences. In all of them, the accusing witnesses were all members of the party or state security, with the same casuistry. Neither the Cuban Law nor the practice of the judges, in criminal cases whose accusation is the State, give options for calling to testify and evaluating the witnesses of the accused, who are even detained before reaching the court door. .
- Criminalization of the exercise of fundamental rights: The United Nations has been explicit in describing the demonstrations in Cuba as “peaceful”, so all the crimes that were fabricated have also been disqualified on numerous occasions by the United Nations, the IACHR, and various international NGOs, such as Prisoners Defenders.
- Insufficient crimes, manipulable due to their lack of specificity: The Human Rights Mandates were struck by the fact that “the majority of the detained persons have been charged with the crime of Public Disorder and there have been no private witnesses, private accusations or private victims who are not officials or members of the Government.” If they are “public” disorders, there must be many affected among the “public”.
- Military tribunals used against civilians for which more than 100 protesters have been imprisoned, and summary procedures that violate all equality of arms in the criminal process, even in its mere legal definition, where there is not even a text with the sentence, deliberations and conclusions, since it is merely verbal, and all this without the mandatory presence, by Law, of either a lawyer or a prosecutor. The judge acts under the police report and request, and the process is concluded with a conviction in a matter of hours.
The NGO indicated that the accusatory letter TO CUB 2/2024 signed by the United Nations mandates was prepared as “direct and unequivocal response” to the complaint of Prisoners Defenders of violations of due process in Cuba that the NGO delivered to them in July 2023, based on Cuban Law, and which included an opinion on the impossibility by Law to register any independent association in Cuba.
The six mandates stated that “the information received is sufficiently reliable to indicate that there is a matter that warrants immediate attention” and that “the Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions could also refer a case through its ordinary procedure,” the organization added.
Javier Larrondopresident of Prisoners Defenders, stated in an audio sent to Infobae his “deep gratitude to the six mandates” and highlighted “the commitment of the NGO to continue working to eradicate the procedural framework of violation of the rights of all those prosecuted, convicted and political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Cuba.”
“The warning to the Cuban regime that the United Nations will issue more successive public condemnations based on this work for the political prisoners in Cuba and the total lack of due process, fuels hope for the release of all political prisoners in Cuba”, he indicated.
Finally, although they gave him 60 days to make his defense, the Cuban regime did not respond within the established period.
