There is no consensus within the international community on the matter of the death penalty.

According to reports submitted during the 59th session of the Commission on Human Rights by virtue of its 2000/77 resolution (E/CN. 4/2003/106 and Add. 1), until December 1, 2002, 71 countries and territories kept the death penalty as means of punishment for diverse crimes, 77 had completely abolished it, 15 had eliminated it only in connection with common crimes and 33 were considered de facto abolitionists, because, although their national legislation still maintained the death penalty as punishment, the State had not applied it in recent years.

Though the Constitution of the Republic of Cuba includes no precept as regards the application or abolition of capital punishment, Cuba’s Penal Code does stipulate this penalty for the most serious crimes, namely: Actions against the State’s independence or territorial integrity; Promotion of armed actions against Cuba; Armed service against the State; Aid to the enemy; Espionage; Rebellion; Usurpation of Political or Military command; Sabotage; Terrorism; Genocide; Piracy; Mercenarism; Apartheid; Crimes against State security; Murder; Rape of minors; International drug trafficking.

Nevertheless, while included in Cuba’s national legislation, the death penalty has been applied in Cuba only exceptionally. It is applied by the Court only in the most serious cases of the crimes for which it is established (in such a case, Chapter III, Section I, Article 29 of the Penal Code or the Law against Terrorist Acts is applied).

In 1999, the National Assembly of the People’s Power modified the Penal Code by adopting Law No. 87; the law prescribes the application of the life sentence for some crimes, with the principal objective of making increasing punitive use of it as an alternative to the death penalty.

Furthermore, Cuba respects and strictly complies with safeguards established by the United Nations to guarantee the protection of the rights of deathrow inmates (Resolution 1984/50 ECOSOC), at the legislative and practical levels. In this regard, it suffices to review the essential characteristics of this penalty and its application procedure, as reflected in Cuban legislation:

1- If a state of derangement, a transitory mental trauma or a mental challenge deprives a person of the faculty needed to comprehend the scope of his or her action or to control his or her behavior, he or she shall be exempted of penal responsibility for the crime committed (Chapter III, first section, Article 20, Penal Code)

2- The death penalty cannot be applied to anyone under the age of 20 (in United Nations safeguards, the minimum age is that of 18), nor to women who committed the crime while pregnant or who will be so at the time sentence is passed. In Cuba, the death penalty has not been applied to a single woman since January 1st, 1959.

3- Cuba’s Penal Code envisages imprisonment sentences as an alternative form of punishment for crimes for which the death penalty is stipulated, that is to say, reasonable judicial discretion exists.

4- Cuba’s criminal proceedings, so much at the level of law as in judicial practice, are organized such that all criminal acts, in order to be punished, must be proven with ample and incontrovertible evidence, regardless of the testimonies of the defendant or close relatives up to fourth-degree relatives. In treating facts surrounding a crime for which the death penalty is envisaged, this process of verification is taken to its most rigorous extent.

5- The process consists of a hearing and a trial. The trial is oral and public and is conducted before a previously assembled court made up of 5 judges. In the event the defendant has not designated a defense attorney, one is appointed to him by the State.

6- The first death sentence handed down by the court may be appealed by the convicted; if the latter does not appeal it, the sentence is considered appealed by default. That is to say, the appeal does not only constitute a right of the defendant, it is also a duty imposed by law which automatically comes into force.

7- The appeal is heard by the highest judicial authority in the nation, that is, the People’s Supreme Court. Once the appeal is received by the Supreme Court, a new trial is held. That is, every crime punishable with death is tried by two judicial authorities, including the nation’s highest judicial authority. Both the lower court and the court of appeals made up of 5 judges, such that the case is reviewed by a total of 10 judges. In both trials, the defendant designates a defense attorney, or one is appointed for him.

8- If the death penalty is ratified by the Supreme Court, the latter is obliged by law to convey the proceedings to the State Council, a collegially structured entity, so that this one may pronounce itself with respect to the exercise of the right of pardon, that is, on the commutation of capital punishment with a imprisonment sentence. The death penalty cannot be applied before the State Council makes a pronouncement.

9- In all trials for crimes for which the death penalty is envisaged, a medical and psychiatric expert’s report on the defendant is mandatory. This expert’s report is drafted by a team of specialists composed of at least one forensic expert and two psychiatrists, who are duty-bound to contribute the greatest possible number of facts about the psychological state of the defendant, with the aim of determining whether the crime may, in fact, be legally imputed to him.

It is important to stress that the death penalty has constituted a juridical instrument used by Cuba in the defense of its national security, so much in view of the numerous acts of external aggression to which it has been subjected as before terrorist acts and abominable crimes aimed at destroying the Cuban State or the lives of its citizens.

The abolition of the death penalty in Cuba has been significantly discouraged by the continued policy of aggression and terrorism endured by its people, promoted or tolerated by the Government of the United States.

Cuba considers that the application of the death penalty on April of 2003 to those responsible for the violent kidnapping of the “Baraguá” public ferryboat cannot be understood and subjected to a just and objective analysis without giving due consideration to the context and circumstances in which such a severe decision was arrived at.

Plans to destroy the revolutionary process undertaken by Cubans through a military action have been hatched for years now in the United States. The assumption to power of the war-mongering ultra-right in the United States in 2001 and the privileged positions conceded by the Bush Administration to important representatives of the Cuban American terrorist mob have made the possibility of a direct act of aggression against Cuba by the United States more real than ever.

During the first months of 2003, emboldened by the incipient predatory war on Iraq, groups within the Cuban American terrorist mob, acting with the complicity of representatives of the United State’s militaristic ultra-right, orchestrated and executed a plan aimed at provoking a serious bilateral crisis between Cuba and the United States, crisis that would serve as pretext to promote a military aggression in Cuba.

Specifically, the plan sought to encourage the successive hijacking of Cuban sea and air vessels, acts which would serve to fuel a propaganda campaign aimed at fabricating an image of anarchy and chaos in Cuba and, with that, the perception that a massive exodus of US-bound Cuban migrants was imminent.

The plan found footing on a number of support factors. Among them, in the first place, was the incentive to hijack sea and air vessels and to reroute them to the United States embodied by the Cuban Adjustment Law and the reception that US authorities offer all Cubans who arrive at their territory illegally, even when the latter carry out terrorist acts to achieve this, as has been the case, historically. The continuous encouragement given to potential hijackers through subversive radio broadcasts originating in Miami and localities near Cuba was another important element in this anti-Cuba campaign.

The terrorist episode involving the Baraguá vessel was preceded by the violent hijacking of two air vessels. Between the dates of March 19 and April 10, 2003, in addition to the two, abovementioned hijackings, 29 other plans to violently hijack aircraft and sea vessels were detected and neutralized by our law enforcement authorities.

Between April 5 and 8 of 2003, those responsible for hijacking and rerouting the Baraguá ferryboat to the United States through the use of weapons, serious violence and by threatening the lives of crew members and passengers were tried. These acts endangered the lives of dozens of people, who were turned into hostages and came close to being murdered.

The group of 11 hijackers made hostages of the 29 passengers on board, 4 girls, who also received death threats, traveling as tourists among them (two French and two Nordic).

The Provincial Court of Havana applied summary trial proceedings in this case, after a decision in this regard had been reached by the President of the Supreme Court, in accordance with Articles 479 and 480 of the Penal Proceedings Law and with complete respect for and no curtailment of any of the fundamental guarantees for and rights of the defendant. A summary trial is an instrument that is included in the legislations of over 100 countries around the world, including the United States. In the case of Cuba, its existence dates back to the Rules of Criminal Procedure of 1888, which was in force in Cuba until 1973. The new norms adopted that are currently in effect borrowed much from those Rules.

Following the presentation and verification of incontrovertible evidence and numerous testimonies by victims and eyewitnesses, the court considered that the crimes constituted serious terrorist acts, envisaged in Law 93 Against Acts of Terrorism of December 24, 2001 , by virtue of which and in consideration of the social dangerousness surrounding the facts, the different levels of individual responsibility and participation and the criminal backgrounds of the defendant, the three principal, most active and brutal leaders were applied the death penalty. The remaining authors were applied punitive measures that range from a 2-year-long jail sentence to life imprisonment.

The three sentenced to death immediately appealed the ruling before the People´s Supreme Court, who held a new trial in which the ruling was ratified.

The death sentences were submitted for the consideration of the State Council by default; the latter, in a meeting convoked for this purpose, took up the proven facts behind the convictions, their seriousness and the potential dangers they entailed not only for the lives of numerous innocent people but also for the nation’s security
—subjected to a sinister plan of provocation hatched by the most extremist sectors of the US government and their allies in Miami’s terrorist mob, with the sole objective of creating the needed conditions and pretexts to attack Cuba—, analyzing the matter in depth for hours on end. The Council considered the sentences passed by both courts absolutely just and in strict adherence to law, ratifying the sentences.

It is important to bear in mind the context within which the abovementioned proceedings were instituted, whose distinguishing mark is the level of unprecedented aggressiveness of the Bush Administration. In that same period, the US Interests Section in Havana, in flagrant violation of norms governing diplomatic behavior, hugely intensified its promotion of subversive actions in Cuba, lending uncommon levels of material and financial support and handing down very clear and direct instructions to its salaried mercenaries in the island.

Cuba respects the position of those who honestly oppose the death penalty.

However, in the case described, it was not a question of alternatives; it was the only possible decision. The death penalty had to be applied to the three principal and proven perpetrators of terrorist acts in order to protect the lives of millions of Cubans before the imminent danger of a situation that could have served as pretext for a US military aggression in Cuba. The measures that Cuba was forced to adopt in legitimate defense of its territory served to put an abrupt end to the hijacking and rerouting of sea and air vessels toward the United States.

Cuba wants to reiterate that, while the retention of this penalty within its legislation finds clear, popular support, the possibility of abolishing the death penalty in the future has not been excluded from consideration, and it is willing to subject such a possibility to continuous evaluation. Our people have fostered fraternity and solidarity among all human beings and among all of the peoples of the world. The countless lives saved everyday by the over 16 000 Cuban health specialists collaborating and working in 65 different countries are an unquestionable example of that.

Cuba repudiates the hypocritical and illegitimate anti-Cuba propaganda actions and campaigns carried out by the United States and a number of its chief allies, who have sought to distort the circumstances surrounding the application of the death penalty to those responsible for the hijacking of the Baraguá ferryboat.

The United States is one of the countries in the world where the death penalty is most often applied, in utter disregard of the guarantees that the United Nations establishes for its execution. In the United States, both mentally disabled individuals and children have been applied the death penalty or currently await its application. In that country, the application of the death penalty responds to an obvious racial and economic pattern. Among the 820 people executed between 1976 and December of 2002, a disproportionate number was represented by African Americans, Hispanics and people of low income.

Why so much fuss over the exceptional application of the death penalty in Cuba? Why so much cynicism? Why haven’t similar accusations been levelled within the Commission on Human Rights against the United States, a champion in the arbitrary application of the death penalty?