The authorities believe that the Constitution, approved in 2019, is based on “legal guarantees”
14ymedio, Havana, July 16, 2024 — Yamila Peña, Attorney General of Cuba, celebrated that “the policy of severity is being complied with,” during a meeting on Monday with senior officials of the Public Ministry and the Interior. Her assessment came after offering a fact: 91% of the prison sentences that Cuban prosecutors have requested this year have been ratified by the judges. The members of the Committee on Constitutional and Legal Affairs of the Parliament – lawyers, judges and police – meeting this week, commented on a remark by the president of the Supreme Court, Rubén Remigio Ferro, on the 2019 Constitution: “We have given ourselves extremely supportive laws, which are a challenge for those involved in procedural management.”
The legal situation is aggravated if it is considered that Cuba only has 69% of the judges and 74% of the prosecutors it needs to operate with the required “severity” – a word repeated by all the members of the Commission. The Prosecutor’s Office is in the middle of the “preparation and reorganization of the force,” Peña said, at the worst of times: the country is in crisis and crime has proliferated.
Prosecutors have asked to pay more attention to the investigation and police instruction. The officers, it was explained at the meeting, drafted in the first half of this year more than 29,000 reports – documents in which a police investigation is recorded – and reviewed 39,000 files in the preparatory phase.
Some 57% of the accused whose names appeared on the reports ended up in jail
Some 57% of the accused whose names appeared on the reports ended up in prison, a sentence that was also applied to 84% of the defendants who appeared in the f
