The death penalty has been used in Cuba since the 1959...

The death penalty has been used in Cuba since the 1959 revolution, after which Castro's triumphant revolutionary forces tried and executed scores of supporters of former dictator Fulgencio Batista. The death penalty was common in the 1960s and 1970s, but has been rare in the past two decades. In more recent years, the death penalty, carried out by firing squad, has been reserved for cases like terrorism, armed rebellion or particularly gruesome killings or serial murders. The most high-profile recent executions in Cuba were in 1992, when 2 local men were sent to the firing squad for killing 4 policemen in an unsuccessful bid to escape from the island at Tarara, just east of Havana. Also that year, a Cuban exile from the United States, Eduardo Diaz Betancourt, was executed after being convicted of planning sabotage and terrorist attacks on the island. In perhaps the most famous execution case in Cuba, a former revolutionary hero and general, Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, and 3 other military officers were killed by firing squad in 1989 after a military tribunal convicted them on drug and corruption charges.