Yobel Sevila was sentenced to 5 years in prison with correctional labour

On June 7, 2015, Yobel Sevila was present at a popular celebration when a fight among unknown individuals occurred. He asked the uniformed men to stop the quarrel. However, instead of stopping those who were fighting, the policemen detained and hit Yobel and his three companions. Afterwards they drove them to the police station, where Yobel spent 72 hours in detention, while suffering from pain in the ribs. The authorities accused Yobel of assaulting two policemen, fracturing the finger of one of them and the arm of the other one. Several months passed when on December 4, Yobel was detained at home by national police and state security agents. He was driven to the Guantanamo operations unit and subsequently to the prison. The next day his family was notified that Yobel was being accused of assault for what had happened in June. After the arrest, Yobel’s file created by the instructor Charlot could not be accessed by Yobel’s lawyer Yoelber Delgado Fisto, due to which he could not obtain vital information concerning the case, request a change of Yobel’s condition or use other legal means, including immediate release due to lacking evidence. On March 8, 2016, after 3 months of imprisonment, Yobel was released on bail. The date of the trial was set to March 15. Since then the trial was however postponed three times: first time in March, second time in April, and third time in May when two witnesses did not arrive. Finally, it took place on June 10 and on June 29, Yobel was found guilty: he was convicted of crime causing injury with aggravating circumstances and sentenced to 5 years of correctional work with imprisonment. The sentence was appealed on the same day and the court must decide on July 13. Besides being postponed several times for no reason, the trial was affected by several anomalies: the defence was not allowed to present more than one witness, while the prosecutor counted with four; the policemen’s declaration were inconsistent, all of them said they put Yobel down on the floor, while this action could have been done only by one of them; the policeman that allegedly suffered the fracture did not remember which arm got fractured; they also mentioned that they had handcuffed Yobel’s hands, which however must have limited Yobel’s ability to effectively fracture hand of the policeman.