Prison break brings death sentences amid crackdown
By Juan O. Tamayo . jtamayo@herald.com. Published Saturday, June 17, 2000, in the Miami Herald
A Cuban court has sentenced six men to death by firing squad for a prison break in which five guards were killed and six wounded, underlining the government's harsh attempts to curb a burgeoning crime wave.
Amnesty International, which has long opposed capital punishment, issued an ``urgent action appeal" Friday urging recipients to write or fax the Cuban government requesting clemency for the six.
The previously unknown Dec. 6 prison break highlighted the recent wave of unusually brutal crimes lashing Cuba, a communist-ruled nation where violent crimes were once virtually unknown.
Murders and armed robberies have been on the rise, and one unconfirmed report from opposition journalists claimed three guards were killed last month during the holdup of an armored car carrying $500,000 in western Pinar del Rio province.
Cuba executed at least 10 convicts and sentenced five more to death last year, compared to two executions in 1998, in what human rights activists saw as compliance with President Fidel Castro's calls for an attack on crime.
In a speech last February, Castro said he hoped Cuban judges ``will not be too weak to enforce capital punishment." All the men executed were believed to be common criminals, not political dissidents.
19TH CENTURY
Cuban human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez called the executions a throwback to 19th-century ideas for controlling society, and both the European Union and Amnesty International condemned the 1999 increase in executions.
The prison break came to light following a report last month by dissident Juan Carlos González Leyva, a member of the Avileña Foundation For Human Rights in the eastern town of Ciego de Avila.
González told The Herald on Friday that the six men killed five guards and wounded six during a failed attempt to escape from the Canaleta prison on the outskirts of Ciego de Avila.
They were convicted of murder in a Feb. 3-4 trial and their appeals were rejected by the People's Supreme Court. Their case is now under review by the ruling Council of State, an automatic procedure under Cuban law.
``This prison is very, very bad. Hungry, hot. They were beaten very much," he said in a brief telephone chat from Ciego de Avila before the line went dead. Efforts to reestablish the call were fruitless.
González's May 17 report on the prison break included a letter signed by five relatives appealing for clemency for the six men: Osmany Prieto Cartaya, Raidel Rodríguez Rey, Héctor Santana Vega, Julio Alberto Morales Montero, Alberto Díaz Pérez and Morlaix Nodal
Pozo.
ALL ARE UNDER 30
``We recognize the gravity of these violent acts in which prison officials lost their lives and profoundly lament the pain of all families affected. We accept the participation of our six young sons, none older than 30," the letter said.
The relatives said they were appealing for ``a rational justice that would allow a change in this barbaric punishment, death by firing squad . . . and recognizes the sad prison conditions that impels inmates to violence."
``Our sons have suffered all this time the hunger, overcrowding, heat and humidity of the prisons, and above all the mistreatment and even the denial of medical attention," the letter added.
Santana Vega suffered a dislocated shoulder during a ``brutal beating by some of the very same guards attacked later in the prison break," the letter alleged.
González's report was smuggled out of Cuba and was posted May 26 on the Web page of CubaNet, a Miami group that supports dissidents on the island (www.cubanet.org).
Cuba's prison system is believed to be among the largest in Latin America -- the International Red Cross has been banned from inspection visits since the mid 1980s -- with about 100,000 inmates in 300 institutions.
MORE HUMANE?
A report last month by Jill Soffiyah Elijah, an instructor at the Harvard Law School's Criminal Justice Institute who has visited several Cuban prisons, said the system ``is in many respects far more humane than Western propaganda would have the uninformed public believe."
Prisoners wear street clothes, are allowed at least four family and conjugal visits a year, are not required to work and get free education, medical, dental and hospital care, Soffiyah Elijah wrote.
Cuban human rights activists paint a far different picture, one of little food, poor medical attention, and arbitrary beatings and abuses that are harsher for political dissidents.
A Sept. 10 report on the Canaleta prison by two Ciego de Avila dissidents said the facility was designed for 800 inmates but held 1,742, with some forced to sleep on bare floors.
``Food is terrible, because for breakfast they get two to three ounces of sugared water and a boiled potato, and lunch and dinner are insufficient portions of a paste assumed to be a byproduct of wheat."
The bad diet has caused several diseases to spread within the prison, wrote Heyda Martell and Galman Rodríguez, ``and each day the medical attention in this Canaleta prison is more scarce."
Copyright 2000 Miami Herald
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