Mercedes Roque once again raised her voice in a video posted on Facebook to denounce the obstacles from military and judicial authorities that she faces in exercising her right to appeal the dismissal of her son’s case, Antonio Alejandro Rassi Roque, a recruit who died on August 18, 2025, at Military Unit 5050 "El Calvario" in Havana.
The testimony comes just two weeks after the mother herself publicly denounced the dismissal of the case on July 2, when Prosecutor Velázquez from the Regional Prosecutor's Office informed her that there were no further grounds for investigation.
According to Mercedes Roque, that day they were given only three days to appeal the decision, a deadline that was set for Tuesday, July 7th.
Upon presenting her documentation, the prosecutor referred her to the Territorial Prosecutor's Office of Calvario, where Lieutenant Colonel Aysel informed her that there were no documents related to the case on file there.
"There is no way to justify the death of a son who died in military service," the mother stated in the video.
Mercedes Roque alleges that the prosecutor sent her to the wrong place, depriving her of the only legal avenue available to appeal the dismissal: "You all are just a fixed mat where you cover for each other. We already know the mechanism of tormenting and exhausting the families, and we are accustomed to it working this way."
In the video, the mother directly points to First Lieutenant Political Aldo Fabregas Ardiles of Unit 5050 as responsible for her son's death, an accusation she repeated five times in front of the Chief of the Western Army on June 19 without anyone refuting her.
It also mentions Major Ricardo Martínez as part of the group of implicated officers. Neither of them has been prosecuted.
"Every suicide has a person responsible. The person responsible for the suicide of Antonio Alejandro Rassi Roque is the politician from the 5050, Aldo Fabregas Ardiles. I stated this five times on June 19, in front of the chief of the western army, and no one refuted what I was saying," he declared.
The mother also describes a pattern of harassment leading up to her son's death: threats, mocking, nicknames, gradual disorientation, neglect of personal hygiene, and episodes of falling asleep on guard duty, without anyone alerting the family.
"A child who got disoriented, stopped showering, fell asleep during guard duty, which is a violation, and nobody, nobody, ever called me," she reported.
Mercedes Roque has been demanding answers for almost eleven months without receiving any: she attempted to go to the unit in August 2025 without being attended to, in November of that year the authorities promised "full transparency," and in May 2026 she reported that she had gone over three months without anyone contacting her.
The case falls within a pattern documented by Cubalex, which records at least 78 deaths of recruits since 2019 under opaque or negligent circumstances, with at least 19 fatalities occurring in 2025 alone, seven of which were between July and August of that year.
Instead of reforming the institution, the regime approved Decree 103/2024 in October 2024, which intensified penalties for noncompliance with Mandatory Military Service, imposing fines ranging from 2,500 to 7,000 pesos and legal consequences for youths over 16 years of age.
Mercedes Roque concluded her statement with a direct appeal to other Cuban mothers: "Down with the bloody mandatory military service in Cuba. No more mandatory military service in Cuba. No more innocents dying."
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