Posted on Wed, Feb. 08, 2012

Lorenzo Enrique Copello Castillo, Bárbaro Leodán Sevilla García and Jorge Luis Martinez Isaac are the names of the last three Cuban citizens to face a firing squad. They were arraigned on April 5, 2003, charged under Cuba’s Law 93 of Dec. 20, 2001, known as the “Cuban Law Against Terrorist Acts”, for hijacking a ferry and taking hostages.

They were executed at dawn, April 11, 2003, after being sentenced to death by the People’s Court (Tribunal Popular) of Havana.

The court took only three days to sentence the three young Cubans of African descent to the gallows. The subsequent automatic appeals, first to the Supreme People’s Court (which ratified the lower court’s sentence) and then to the State Council ( Consejo de Estado) — a nonjudicial organ that spent a few hours analyzing the proven facts and their implications vis-a vis-potential risks for state security — were found without merit.

I strictly followed the official story in writing a brief essay dissecting the legal procedure it described, and it was rather easy for me — who had not visited criminal law since I was a young lawyer in Argentina — to show a blatant failure to comply with the provisions of Cuba’s own substantive and criminal procedure laws. The circumstances did not even allow for the application of the death penalty: Under Cuba’s Law 93, the death penalty is reserved for crimes resulting in loss of life or severe injuries, conditions that were absent in the case, and to material damages or losses of considerable importance and significance, also absent.

Even in the case of an abbreviated criminal procedure authorized under Cuban laws — of dubious applicability to a case like the one at hand — it was all but impossible to go through the different stages of the trial in less than 15 days. Yet, these three fellow Cubans were condemned and shot in six days.

I undertook this arguably futile writing exercise, after the sad fact of the executions, for the sole purpose of confronting (amiably and without animosity, but showing my plainly justified indignation, as a Cuban and as a lawyer) some of my friends and colleagues in Cuba (most of them of a different ideological persuasion than mine) with the facts listed in my essay.

And I did this because I strongly believe that by seeking that dialogue and confrontation, I am more likely to have an impact on the future — and even the near future — of Cuba than by marching up and down Calle Ocho or even ranting against the Cuban government from the halls of Congress.

Now we face the case of Wilmar Villar, a young, healthy Cuban citizen who, while in the custody of the Cuban authorities — whose official story apparently claims he was not in any kind of hunger strike — develops a condition that kills him in a few short days despite the avowed quality of Cuba’s medical know-how.

Both cases are similarly perplexing, under the light of Cuba’s own laws and under the most basic and universally recognized — human rights.

But even more perplexing is that some of us Cuban Americans claim that by sticking to our guns and persevering on historically impotent policies aimed at isolating Cuba — so impotent that even those who support them say they are just a pretense — we are doing anything to prevent incidents like those described above from happening, again and again.

We need to engage, we need to debate and confront our beliefs and ideas with those in Cuba who contest them. And we need to do that for the sake of people like Copello, Sevilla, Martinez and Villar. I am afraid history will find it hard to absolve us if we simply sit tight and wait till we can pick up the broken pieces of a homeland that is as much theirs as it is ours.

José Manuel Palli, a lawyer born in Cuba, is president of World Wide Title, Inc.