Former Political Prisoner Urges Cuban Regime's Leaders to Face Justice "By Their Own Law"

In a statement filled with irony, former Cuban political prisoner Alejandro González Raga issued a stern warning to the officials of the regime responsible for crimes and repression: they should be tried "by their own law," which still includes the death penalty.

This assertion was made during an interview with journalist Tania Costa, where González Raga—now the executive director of the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights (OCDH)—discussed the issue of accountability in a post-dictatorship Cuba.

González Raga was careful to make a distinction: not all Cubans who were part of the regime's structures deserve the same treatment.

"We can't generalize. As Cubans, we know many people have been involved in the game, in double standards, to live a better life," he pointed out.

However, this understanding has a clear boundary. "Those who participated in acts of violence, those who violated norms, those who contributed to violence, those people must be judged by the law. And I would say, by their own law. By their own law, there is still the death penalty," González Raga emphasized, leaving the statement hanging with deliberate intent.

"Let's leave it there. Let's leave it there, we've left it on a high note," the journalist suggested, turning the silence into an implicit warning.

The argument has a concrete legal basis. The Cuban Penal Code, in effect since December 2022, maintains the death penalty for 23 offenses of extreme severity, including crimes against state security, terrorism, and international drug trafficking. Executions are carried out by firing squad.

According to the People's Supreme Court, the last official execution in Cuba was in 2003, and pending death sentences were commuted in 2008. However, the legal existence of capital punishment remains, according to human rights organizations, a tool of political intimidation.

González Raga is intimately familiar with the Cuban penal system. He was one of the 75 dissidents imprisoned during the Black Spring of 2003, when Fidel Castro's regime swiftly arrested independent journalists, activists, and human rights defenders in summary trials.

Sentenced to 14 years for his work as an independent journalist and his involvement with the Christian Liberation Movement and the Varela Project, he served five years in Cuban prisons before being released and exiled to Spain in February 2008, as part of an agreement between both governments. Amnesty International recognized him as a prisoner of conscience.

From exile, González Raga has continued to document the island's repression as the executive director of the Cuban Observatory for Human Rights, an organization founded in Madrid on December 10, 2010, primarily composed of former prisoners of conscience and members of the Ladies in White.

After discussing justice, the conversation shifted to a personal project: González Raga revealed he is working on a comic about his prison experience, using artificial intelligence. "It's a comic I'm making. You know, artificial intelligence now offers many possibilities," he explained, describing the project as a hobby.

The new Cuban Penal Code has also been criticized by the OCDH for criminalizing the exercise of fundamental freedoms, with Amnesty International describing it as a "terrifying prospect" for human rights on the island.