The Cuban court sentenced 20 protesters who participated in the anti-government protests on July 11 last year – including five minors – to between five years of limitation of liberty and 20 years in prison for sedition on Monday (14), they said. the activists.
This decision by the Holguín Provincial Court is, as 11J activist Salomé García Bacalao explained to Efe, the first joint sentence for the crime of sedition handed down in the country as a result of the July 2021 demonstrations.
The 15 adults convicted, mostly men between the ages of 18 and 59, received prison terms below the prosecution’s request. No defendant was found not guilty.
Two were sentenced to 20 years in prison, three to 18 years, two to 17, one to 15, two to 14, two to 12 and two to seven. In addition, an 18-year-old was sentenced to 5 years of “non-inpatient correctional work”.
The five minors – four aged 17 and one aged 16 -, for whom the prosecution asked for between 15 and 18 years in prison, were sentenced to “five years with limited liberty”.
The minimum prison age in Cuba is 16, but 16 and 17-year-olds can receive a reduction of up to half their sentence.
The sentence does not include Yasmani Crespo, who was included in the case and did not appear at the trial, according to Salomé García. There is speculation that he may have left the country.
Some activists denounced that several of the convicts were taken directly to prison after reading the decision, despite the sentence stating that they could be released on bail pending appeal.
The Cuban justice did not publicly release these sentences and the official media did not report on the decision.
Activists and NGOs have denounced lack of guarantees, fabrication of evidence and excessive penalties in these lawsuits around the biggest anti-government protests in decades.
They also pointed to the use of the crime of sedition in the trials of 11J protesters, due to its political connotation and ambiguous evidence.
The Attorney General’s Office of Cuba recently argued that it chose to denounce sedition in some cases due to the “level of violence demonstrated in the vandalism” and “in a tumultuous manner” there was the “deliberate purpose of subverting the constitutional order” and, as a result, the ” serious disturbance of public order”.
He also claimed that the trials showed “compliance with constitutional rights and guarantees of due process”, despite the “manipulation” that “intends to accuse Cuba of human rights violations”.
Cuba reported that 790 people were prosecuted for relevant acts related to the July 11 protests, of which 55 are between 16 and 17 years old. Another 27 are under 16 years old, to whom alternative measures were applied for not having reached the minimum penal age.
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