Spaniard put on trial in Cuba for "corrupting minors"

A Spanish businessman went on trial Monday in Havana on charges of corrupting minors and pimping after he made a television report in 2008 about child prostitution in Cuba.

Prosecutors are asking for a 15-year prison sentence for Sebastián Martínez Ferraté. Several witnesses were called to testify against Martínez Ferraté at a court hearing, which was closed off to the foreign media, including some of the youths who appeared in the report that was videotaped with a hidden camera and later broadcast on Spanish television network Telecinco.

During a recess in the trial, Pablo Barrios, the Spanish consul in Cuba, told reporters that Martinez Ferraté, 57, pleaded innocent to the crimes prosecutors have charged him with. According to the consul, the trial is centered on the television documentary, which was also shown in the courtroom.

Other sources said that Martínez Ferraté has asked the court to convict him on the lesser charge of slander against the Cuban state, which carries a three-year-sentence.

Documentary on trial

Barrios said he was under the impression that the prosecution's theory is that the young people who were interviewed for the report were not telling the truth and were forced to declare certain things about child prostitution.

"I think they are trying to put the documentary on trial," Barrios said. "The way I see it, what they are judging is a documentary [where] the people who are talking are not telling the truth about what they do and they are forced to say certain things."

Martínez Ferraté was arrested a year ago upon his arrival in Havana on a business trip as general manager for a chain of Spanish hotels. Between the completion of the television report in 2008 and his arrest, he returned to the island on different occasions.

If Martinez Ferraté is found guilty, the Spanish Consulate in Havana will insist that he be expelled from the island on humanitarian grounds because, according to Barrios, the defendant suffers from severe depression.

During the trial on Monday, he began to cry when he gave the court his statement, the consul said.

Since his arrest in July last year, Martinez Ferraté has held in custody at the Condesa jail, in the municipality of Güines, some 60 kilometers outside Havana.