Rafael Román Martel

Summit, New Jersey. The Cuban National Assembly has named longtime
Minister of Defense, Raúl Castro, President of Cuba. As second-in-command
of a 49-year old dictatorship, he is directly responsible for crimes
against humanity on countless thousands in Cuba and worldwide.

Raúl Castro, as longtime member of Cuba’s Council of State, has been
signing execution orders for years. But, his killing career began
early on. In 1956, while in exile in Mexico, he murdered a former comrade.
During the revolutionary struggle in the mountains, he executed
deserters and informants. In the early days of the Revolution, while in charge
of the Oriente province, he had hundreds of men killed. In one day
alone, he ordered at least 72 men executed without trial in the city of
Santiago. All throughout the night of January 12, 1959 and into the
following day, successive groups of men were lined up in front of ditches at
San Juan Hill and shot by firing squads. Raúl is reported to have
gleefully delivered the coup d’grace on a few. Afterwards, a bulldozer
was brought in to cover the mass graves. Among the victims was policeman
Benito Cortés, an American citizen born in Puerto Rico and father of
five. In 1966, Raúl had the bodies exhumed, encased in concrete, and
dumped into deep waters off the coast of Cuba.

Cuba Archive has documented dozens of people, including many children,
killed attempting to escape Cuba with Raúl in a leading role. His Air
Force carried out the Canimar River Massacre of July 6, 1980, when
dozens were murdered. Many more unarmed civilians are believed to have
suffered similar fate at the hand of special Air Force units dedicated to
spotting and sinking rafts. Like countless others, on January 19, 1994,
two young men -Iskander Maleras and Luis Angel Valverde- were killed by
Cuban border guards stationed around the U.S. Naval Base at
Guantánamo operating under Raúl’s direct orders to shoot. He rewarded their
deed with medals and promotions.

As Defense Minister, Raúl Castro is responsible for war crimes in and
out of Cuba. During the rural uprising of the sixties, his armed forces
set fire and executed hundreds of prisoners on the spot. During the
Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, five prisoners were executed shortly after
their capture; nine were deliberately asphyxiated in a trailer truck.
The toll of victims multiplies over the course of decades with Cuba’s
international military incursions in Latin America, Africa, and the
Middle East. Intentional attacks on civilian populations in Angola are
part of his legacy.