A 5-year-old police report on thefts from state-owned restaurants was the evidence submitted by Cuban prosecutors as a "state secret" in the Havana trial of a prominent dissident, says a lawyer present at the trial.
Francisco Chaviano Gonzalez, head of Cuba's National Council on Civil Rights, was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison by a military court for the alleged possession of that document.
"The trial was very arbitrary, as are so many others that occur daily," lawyer Rene Gomez Manzano told The Herald. Foreign reporters and other observers were barred from the courtroom.
The defense was not allowed to summon witnesses, Gomez said, and the prosecution refused to display the alleged evidence.
In addition, he said, the court did not allow Chaviano to select a defense attorney, appointing an army officer to perform that task.
Gomez had access to the courtroom because he defended Abel del Valle Diez, Chaviano's co-defendant. The prosecutors had asked for a two-year sentence for Del Valle, whom they accused of hiding the documents.
"The trial was full of irregularities," Gomez said. "To begin with, my client was sentenced to three years in prison, that is, to a longer term than the prosecutors had asked for."
The worst flaw, the lawyer said, was that no one ever saw the "secret" documents that were key to the trial.
Gomez, 51, is one of several Cuban lawyers who have criticized the nation's judicial system.
According to dissident sources, an envelope carrying the documents was handed to Chaviano by a stranger moments before police arrested Chaviano at his home in May 1994. The stranger then disappeared, an act suggesting entrapment.
"Naturally, I requested (the documents), but the judges denied them to me, saying they were secret," Gomez said. "What lawyer in this world could possibly conduct a defense if the accusers' key piece of evidence is secret?"
At Gomez's insistence, the court allowed a State Security officer to examine and describe the alleged evidence.
"When the expert returned, he told us the secret document consisted mainly of police reports about restaurant crime in 1990," the lawyer said. It was "a collection of 5-year-old complaints about the theft of steaks, beer and coffee sets."
Teresa Fernandez Gonzalez, Chaviano's 66-year-old stepsister, believes the trial was a farce.
"The sentence had been written down beforehand," she told The Herald. "They didn't allow my brother to defend himself."
Fernandez said Chaviano may have been drugged before being taken to the courtroom.
"My brother could hardly speak," she said. "His throat was dry and he had a splitting headache. He believes someone slipped drugs into his breakfast."
© 1996 The Miami Herald.