The TPS president who is judging the former official made a public argument in favor of the death penalty two years ago.
14ymedio, Madrid, November 13, 2025 — The trial in which former Economy Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Alejandro Gil Fernández was accused of espionage concluded this Thursday, one day longer than expected, according to sources close to the proceedings who spoke to EFE. The Supreme People’s Court (TSP) did not indicate whether the case had been submitted for judgment.
A source connected to the case, who requested anonymity, told 14ymedio that the secrecy surrounding the matter is “total.” Inside the courtroom where the trial was being held, at the People’s Civil and Family Court of Marianao, in Havana, the only family member allowed to attend was the former official’s son, Alejandro Gil González, from whom “no statement of any kind” is expected, the same source said.
In the vicinity of the courthouse, both this Thursday and yesterday, the activity that had been present on Tuesday, the first day of the trial, announced less than 24 hours in advance on the midday news, was nowhere to be seen. Only three State Security agents, one of them on a motorcycle, were monitoring the area, a stark contrast to the operation two days prior, when streets and businesses were closed. No international press has been observed either this Wednesday or today, unlike on Tuesday.
The former minister’s sister, María Victoria Gil, a lawyer by training, is puzzled that he is being tried in that court in Marianao.
The former minister’s sister, María Victoria [‘Vicky’] Gil, a former Cuban television presenter and lawyer by training, is puzzled that he is being tried in that court in Marianao and not at the main TPS [Tribunal Supremo Popular] headquarters, the agency handling his case, in Old Havana. She has no explanation for it. “I’m at a loss for words,” she told this newspaper.
This Wednesday, in an interview with Cuban influencer Darwin Santana, who resides in Canada, Vicky Gil outlined three possible scenarios. The first, she said, is that “the prosecution will finalize its provisional conclusions and maintain its request for a life sentence,” even though the prosecution’s specific request is for 30 years. The second is that the prosecution will reach “more moderate conclusions, resulting in a lesser sentence,” and the third is that “the prosecution will withdraw the charges,” something she confessed “is like asking God for the impossible.” For the former minister’s sister, in any case, “it is a sentence that has already been handed down.”
A fourth scenario, not mentioned by María Victoria Gil, is that the Court, with Rubén Remigio Ferro at the helm, raises the prosecution’s request and hands down the maximum penalty, one of the punishments foreseen for the crime of espionage and in force in the Penal Code although it has not been applied on the Island since 2003. The TPS president himself, two years ago, made a public argument in favor of the death penalty, which he defined as the “crown jewel” of the Military Penal Code Law.
At that time, Ferro noted that a “death penalty” had not been applied for twenty years, since “those events of the boat hijacking and the whole situation that ensued,” referring to the 2003 theft of the Regla Ferry vessel that traveled between Regla and Old Havana with the goal of reaching the United States. The boat quickly ran out of fuel, and ten people were arrested and prosecuted. Among them, nine days later, after a summary trial, Lorenzo Copello, Bárbaro Sevilla, and Jorge Martínez were executed by firing squad.
“There is no official statement on the matter, but all this time that has passed is a kind of undeclared moratorium. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
“There is no official statement on the matter, but all this time that has passed is a kind of undeclared moratorium. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” said the TPS president regarding the maximum penalty. He justified it by saying, “We have to have it there as a defense for our society, for our State, for our Revolution, against the very serious threats we constantly face.”
The government has remained silent on this potential outcome of the trial against Gil Fernández, who faces another trial on the remaining charges—a dozen in total, including embezzlement, tax evasion, and influence peddling—in which some twenty other people, including high-ranking regime officials, will also be prosecuted. These days, it has limited itself to disseminating, through various media outlets, excerpts from the interview conducted by the newspaper Granma with Arnel Medina Cuenca , a “Doctor of Juridical Sciences,” who explained why the trial is being held behind closed doors.
“That decision rests exclusively with the Court, which is the one analyzing the specific case and it has all the evidence from both the prosecution and the defense,” the specialist told the Communist Party newspaper. “The Cuban criminal process, regulated by Law 143, establishes in Article 477 that the oral trial is public, unless reasons of national security, morality, public order, or the respect due to the victim or their family advise holding it behind closed doors.” The fact that the crime being tried is espionage—”extremely serious, because it directly threatens national security,” Medina Cuenca said—is the TPS’s excuse for not holding a public hearing.
The decision denied the request for an open trial made by the former minister’s daughter, Laura María Gil, in social media posts after the Court’s decision was announced on television on Monday afternoon.
Alejandro Gil Fernández is being defended by lawyer Abel Solá López, who has extensive experience in trials related to state security. One such case was the 2017 trial that sentenced Alina López Miyares and her husband, Félix Martín Milanés Fajardo, to 13 and 17 years in prison, respectively, for espionage. That trial, held on October 2nd in the Marianao Military Court’s Justice Room, was also closed to the public and “without access for the defendants’ families.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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