Ex Cuban Prosecutor Admits Made-to-Order Trials & Sentences

Former Cuban prosecutor, seeking asylum in Switzerland, Insists that the Cuban Communist Party Imposes the Sentences for July 11th (11J) Protests

By 14ymedio

HAVANA TIMES – Raucel Ocaña Parada, former prosecutor of Palma Soriano, in Santiago de Cuba, left the island and has requested political asylum in Switzerland, according to the Cuban Observatory of Human Rights (OCDH). The jurist has denounced in an interview that the sentences against the protesters of July 11th (11J) are developed by the Communist Party of Cuba before the beginning of each process.

“When a sentence is issued regarding people who demonstrated against the Government, the ruling is already prejudged before the trial is held. The prosecutor already knows what they have to say, the judge also knows what they have to do. The judicial process is directed from behind the curtain,” he states in a video released by the OCDH, based in Madrid.

Ocaña has not been in charge of any case related to the protests in his town, since that has been the task of the head of the Palma Soriano Municipal Prosecutor’s Office, the second city to join the protests on July 11, 2021, after the outbreak in San Antonio de los Baños.

The former prosecutor, however, was in the city and has recounted what he could observe at that time. “Several people appeared in front of the government and the communist party buildings and there they expressed different issues. Because of that, the police acted and, in one way or another, attacked the population. This caused people to defend themselves, a legitimate defense in a state of necessity. Nobody agrees with receiving blows just for expressing their rights,” he says.

The prosecutors, according to his testimony, have no autonomy and are subordinate to their bosses. “Generally, the top authority coerces and does not support the prosecutor’s proposal. They tell you that some political issues in the country must be taken into account, that one must not be so benevolent and instead assume a position of severe punishment.”

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