The chairman of the National Assembly of People's Power's Constitutional and Legal
Affairs Committee, José Luis Toledo Santander,. ACN Photo

Havana, December 21 (RHC)-- Cuba's Assembly of People's Power approved Tuesday the Law on Military Tribunals. The legislation seeks to contribute to strengthening order and discipline in ministries of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and of the Interior.

This new legislation, based on the principles established in Chapter V of the Constitution of the Republic, consolidates the regime of individual guarantees in the military sphere.

Furthermore, in line with international instruments and the Constitution of the Republic, it enshrines the principle of equality before the law, the right of every person to be presumed innocent, the right to a fair and public hearing by a competent, independent, and impartial tribunal established by statute.

The Chairman of the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee of the National Assembly, José Luis Toledo Santander, explained that the military tribunals established in the country have the mission of hearing crimes that affect discipline, order, or other interests of special protection in the nation's armed institutions.

In presenting the opinion of this law, Toledo Santander added that the military establishment represented by the Revolutionary Armed Forces, the armed formations and combatants of the Ministry of the Interior, conforms a specialized organization in terms of its mission, structure, operation, and way of life within the State.

For the correct and effective functioning of the same, the State recognizes a jurisdiction that is expressed in the legal protection of its duties, obligations, and the facts of the areas that in attention to the high interests represented, demand special regulations, consequently establishing the relevant sanctions regime.

For Cubans, military justice as an institution has its most glorious precedent in the Liberating Army and in Regulation Number 1 of the Sierra Maestra, of January 21, 1958, which put into effect the Penal Regime of Cuba in Arms, said Toledo Santander.