By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer

Cuba's execution of at least 10 convicted criminals and the sentencing of five more to death in a two-month crackdown reflect the Havana government's draconian 19th Century ideas for controlling society, a human rights activist said Thursday.

The 10 executions by firing squad compare with only two confirmed in all of 1998, said Gerardo Sanchez Santa Cruz, of the Havana-based Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation.

``This is a very notable increase that scares us, Sanchez said in a telephone interview. ``The most terrible part is that this may be only a partial list, because the government does not always say all it does.

``I believe they are accelerating these processes [executions] in an attempt to maintain social control and control criminal activity, said Jose Miguel Vivanco, Americas regional director for Human Rights Watch.

It's not surprising, Vivanco added, because Cuban law is based on ``draconian concepts from the previous century that assume drastic and exemplary repression averts worse evils.

The string of executions appears to have begun in mid-February, shortly after the National Assembly approved harsh new laws that extended the death penalty to a broad range of common and political crimes.

Cuban laws now make the death penalty possible for 112 crimes, Sanchez said, 79 of them involving state security violations and 33 involving common crimes like drug trafficking, corruption and even cattle rustling.

Castro's word for judges

President Fidel Castro, who urged the Assembly to approve the laws, had earlier told a conference of police officials that he hoped Cuban judges ``will not be too weak to enforce capital punishment to halt the wave of violent crimes racking the island over the past two years.

All 10 of the men executed were convicted of murders committed during robberies or family and personal disputes, Sanchez said. None appeared to have had any political overtones.

At least six of the cases were from eastern cities like Santiago de Cuba and Las Tunas, long viewed as the most pro-Castro but poorest part of the island. The two executions reported in 1998 were also in Santiago de Cuba, Sanchez said.

Eight of the murders occurred in 1997, hinting at a backlog of executions perhaps accumulated since the January 1998 visit to Cuba by Pope John Paul II, a strong critic of the death penalty.

All but two of the executions were reported in provincial newspapers, and radio and television broadcasts, Sanchez said. None appear to have been reported by Havana media that serve foreign audiences, like the international editions of the Communist Party's Granma newspaper.

The other two executions were reported by independent journalists that Sanchez said he considers reliable. Western diplomats in Havana said they regard Sanchez's reports as credible.

Five other convicted criminals were sentenced to death during the recent crackdown, Sanchez said, joining the seven people previously known to be awaiting execution in Cuba.

Two Salvadorans, Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon and Otto Rene Rodriguez Llereno, were sentenced to death in March for a string of terror bombings that racked Havana in the summer of 1997.

An emotionally disturbed man was sentenced to death March 4 for the 1998 murder of a police officer. A Havana court on Feb. 18 ratified the death penalties for two men convicted in the killings of two Italian, one Canadian and one German tourist in 1997 and 1998.

Among the other eight people known to be on death row is a Cuban exile from Miami, Humberto Real Suarez, who infiltrated Cuba by boat with six other exiles in 1994. He was sentenced to death in 1996 after being convicted of murdering a guard; the others were sentenced to 30 years.

Fighting wave of violence

Sanchez said he believes the spree of executions stems from the Castro-inspired campaign launched early this year to halt a surging wave of violent crimes that had affected many Cubans.

Thousands of police from an elite National Brigade were swiftly deployed around Havana in January to round up prostitutes and petty hustlers who had been thriving on Cuba's booming tourist industry.

Cuban laws long allowed the death penalty, although the constitution adopted in 1940 limited it to cases of treason or espionage in times of war. That limitation was removed after the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

A defense of capital punishment published last month by a top hard-line member of the National Assembly showed the government sees it as a tool in its 40-year confrontation with the United States.

Capital punishment, Assembly member Lazaro Barreda wrote in the newspaper Trabajadores, is ``a legal defense mechanism for society against the worst crimes involving very shameful and strongly repudiated actions.

Barreda added that the punishment is also ``dissuasive, especially with regard to the intensification of U.S. attacks and the existence of terrorist groups operating against Cuba.
e-mail: jtamayo@herald.com