Testimony of Sister of Jorge Luis Martinez Isaac
Shot by firing squad, April 11, 2003
| Summary of Events |
On April 5, 2003, eleven Cubans tried to escape from the island by commanding the commuter ferryboat Baraguá that has a route across Havana Bay. There were no deaths, no injuries and the eleven were captured.
The trial resulted in three death sentences, four life sentences, one 30-year sentence, one 8-year sentence, one 5-year sentence and one 3-year sentence.
The executions, by firing squad, were carried out on the night of April 10 or early morning of April 11.
The executed men, all African-Cubans were:
Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac
Lorenzo Enrique Cabello Castillo
Bárbaro Leodan Sevilla García
| Testimony |
On April 11, the Miami Herald reported the following statements from María Ester Montoya Isaac, the half-sister of Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac in a telephone interview.
''We went to the trial the 7th and the sentence was very hard. They treated my brother and the others like dogs. They said they were going to be sanctioned to death. Just like that. They used those ugly words, sancionado a muerte'
''They never proved that they mistreated anyone on board the ferry. On the contrary, everyone said they tried to maintain the peace. The one with the gun, he shot into the air and into the water, but never threatened anyone''
''We appealed the same day as the trial, but they never gave us time to get a good lawyer. The next day was the appeal, at 7 p.m. I had to go and find the same lawyer,''
'He was drugged with pills. He said the guards were drugging him. He was like a crazy man. He kept screaming, 'They're going to kill me! They're going to kill me!'
She said authorities only allowed them to visit for ten minutes. "We hardly had time to talk to him. When we left, a colonel came up to us and told us in a very low voice that the Supreme Court had upheld the sentence.''
But they didn't know it would come that fast, she said.
About 6 a.m. Friday morning, someone called the family to tell them they had to go to the Colón Cemetery for the funeral of Jorge Luis Martínez Isaac. But by the time they arrived at the historic cemetery, her brother had already been buried.
"It is a criminal act, what they've done. My family is devastated. My mother is having a heart attack, she is hysterical. She is going crazy. And my other sister is controlling her blood pressure with pills.
''He was shot in less than 24 hours,'' his sister cried. "We want the world to know what happened here. They say that there is no death penalty in this country. The world needs to know who El Comandante Fidel Castro is. He was the one who directed all of this, the trial, the firing squad, everything.''
"There were declarations that at no time did they threaten anybody. They used the arms to see if they could flee to the United States. It was the only solution.''
"We are like dogs.''
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