The Provincial Popular Court of Santiago de Cuba sentenced a 30-year-old man to 15 years in prison for robbing an industrial parts warehouse along with two accomplices, threatening the guard with an object that resembled a firearm, as reported by the official newspaper Sierra Maestra last Friday.
The events occurred on May 14, 2025, at the Construction Materials Industry facilities in Santiago de Cuba, although the trial—described as oral, public, and exemplary—took place this week before the Court of Crimes against State Security in the provincial court.
According to case 88 of 2026, the accused and two other individuals who were not identified during the investigation jumped the perimeter fence of the warehouse to gain access to the interior.
Once inside, the group threatened the security officer with "an object whose characteristics could not be specified, but that resembled a firearm."
The assailants also "bound the guard's hands and covered his mouth, warning him not to move or scream or they would kill him," according to the account from the state media.
After subduing the guard, the assailants cut pieces of the fence with an object similar to a pair of shears and stole 13 tires, which were later recovered and returned to the affected entity.
The court regarded multiple reoffending as a key aggravating factor: the convicted individual had prior convictions for two other crimes of burglary with force and was serving a sentence while on probation at the time of the offense.
The 15-year penalty represents the maximum stipulated by the basic type of Article 415 of the Cuban Penal Code (Law No. 151/2022), whose range for robbery with violence or intimidation is from seven to 15 years of imprisonment.
In addition to the main penalty, the court imposed accessory sanctions of deprivation of public rights and a prohibition on leaving the national territory, as well as a civil liability of 789 Cuban pesos for the material damages caused to the entity.
The case is part of the Fifth National Exercise to Combat Crime and Corruption, initiated in May 2026, which included around 20 exemplary trials in various provinces of Cuba, prioritizing violent crimes, drug trafficking, and attacks on the electrical system.
In that same context, courts in Matanzas and Las Tunas have handed down sentences ranging from eight to 15 years for violent robberies during 2026, in trials also reported by official media as a warning to the public.
The frequency of these public trials has increased in parallel with the worsening economic crisis in Cuba, which has driven crime rates up across the country and prompted the authorities to increasingly resort to exemplary sentencing as a tool for social control.
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