RIGHTS-CUBA: Death Penalty for Aggravated Drug Trafficking

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Feb 16 1999 (IPS) - Cuba’s government this week launched a frontal attack on crime, strengthening legislation and even announcing the death penalty for officials found guilty of drug trafficking.

The government also introduced punishment of up to 30 years imprisonment and heavy fines for crimes “linked to collaboration” with the aims of the blockade imposed by the United States and this country’s hostile policy against Cuba.

The new law of Protection of National Independence and the Economy of Cuba classes the supply, search for or obtaining of subversive information and the introduction of such material, its reproduction or dissemination as criminal activity.

And the same goes for, collaboration – direct or through third parties – with radio or television broadcasters, newspapers, magazines or other mass media associated with the objectives of Washington’s policy against the island.

In the presentation of the project, the United States was accused of maintaining a policy not only of blockade, but also toward creating “a fifth column supporting its subversive plans” on the island.

The National Assembly approved the code Monday and various modifications Tuesday, in a fight against a crime wave considered by President Fidel Castro as an element of the “enemy strategy” to destroy the revolution.

This toughening of the legal system follows hot on the heels of heavy police deployment to crush crime in recent months. Criminal activity has gone hand in hand with an economic crisis which has been dragging on for nine years.

New clauses in the penal code contemplate the death penalty for crimes which previously only carried a prison sentence, along with the introduction of life imprisonment, as well as increasing the severity of sentences for repeated offences.

Parliament also approved the incorporation of new classes of crime into the penal code, like money laundering and the trafficking of people in an effort to clamp down on the lucrative business of smuggling emigrants into the United States.

Cubans wanting to settle in the United States and unable to do so legally pay up to 8,000 dollars to traffickers armed with high speed launches easily able escape the coastguard, state articles printed in the US press.

For those guilty of this type of trafficking, the new legal framework metes out life imprisonment whenever the offender carries firearms or threatens the life of a third party.

Those condemned to life imprisonment, a punishment also appllied to some forms of violent housebreaking, will lose all rights to conditional liberty or probation.

These reforms also include the death penalty – by firing squad in Cuba – for certain cases of the production, sale, demand, trafficking, distribution and illegal possession of a wide range of drugs and related substances.

Death will also be applied in cases where the guilty party is a civil servant or member of the authorities and also when they help the crime along by using state resources or participate in international drug smuggling.

Castro, who attended the debates prior to approval of the code, stated the death penalty is for those who “commit abominable crimes.”

“We are against the death of the country, what our enemy wants is the death of the Revolution,” said the president, adding that crime has become “a counterrevolutionary instrument.”

The death penalty was applied to General Arnaldo Ochoa, Colonel Antonio de la Guardia and Major Amado Padron in a case of drug trafficking on July 13, 1989, and they were shot following a summary trial.

In the foundations for the bill to change the penal code, it was stated that crime at the moment is the most dangerous threat to the stability of the nation.

At the beginning of January, Castro himself said the death penalty should be applied to “those who try to use the territory of Cuba for international drug trafficking,” taking advantage of the economy opening up to foreign influences.

In the last five years, 188 foreigners have been arrested in attempts to use the nation as a springboard to get drugs in to the United States or Europe, according to press reports.

Similarly, the authorities confiscated 31 tons of drugs between 1994 and mid-1998. The number of vessels picked up carrying drugs along the Cuban coast increased from 34 in 1994 to more than 200 in the first half of 1998.

The 1987 penal code was last updated less than two years ago, in order to flexibilise some punishments and add in new crimes, like bribery, the peddling of political favours, extortion, procuring and white slavery.