Cuba has arrested 17 people after dismantling a network that recruited mercenaries to fight for Russia in Ukraine, official media reported on Thursday.
Three people “belonged to the recruitment program on the island” and the rest confessed “after participating in the operation on the basis of an individual and voluntary decision, in exchange for residence in the Eurasian country and a significant monetary compensation”.
Cuban authorities assured, based on detainee confessions and interception of communications, that the network was managed “from abroad” and that its organizers were looking for “individuals with criminal records, from dysfunctional families.”
Although the alleged crimes for which the detainees are being investigated have not been revealed, the new criminal code establishes “severe sanctions for these types of crimes” that fall between human trafficking, human trafficking and recruitment into mercenaries, Cubadebate said.
The news portal added that the leader of the Supervisory Division of the Criminal Prosecution Department of the Cuban Public Prosecutor’s Office, José Luis Reyes Blanco, explained that “the investigations will determine the crime attributable to each case, in accordance with the actions and will of those involved”.
The publication added “These events are currently under investigation, which are detrimental to national security and alien to the values of the Cuban people.”.
The Cuban government announced Monday the dismantling of a human trafficking network based in Russia that recruited Cubans to fight as mercenaries in the war in Ukraine.
The Ministry of the Interior “has discovered and is working to neutralize and dismantle a human trafficking network operating from Russia to recruit Cuban citizens based there, including some from Cuba”the island’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.
‘Cuba is not part of the armed conflict in Ukraine’stressed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ensured that Cuba “acts and will act energetically” against who “to participate in any form of human trafficking for the purpose of recruitment (…) so that Cuban citizens can use weapons against any country”.
In this sentence it is emphasized that the authorities of the island “they neutralized such attempts and criminal proceedings were initiated against people involved in these activities”.
Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez also defended that Cuba has a “firm and clear historical position against” mercenary groups and “plays an active role in the United Nations in rejecting this practice.”
The Cuban government and official media have echoed Moscow’s rhetoric when referring to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but at the United Nations they have on several occasions chosen to abstain in preference to the Kremlin’s positions to support.
Source: DN
