The Cuban Government announced this Tuesday the release of 553 people “sanctioned for various crimes”, after the intermediation of the Vatican with the island Executive.
According to a statement from the Foreign Ministry of the Caribbean country, the president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, communicated the decision to Pope Francis “in the first days of January” after “a careful analysis based on the different modalities contemplated by the law.” “. The measure, the note added, will be applied “gradually.”
The NGO Prisoners Defenders (PD) has estimated the number of prisoners for political reasons in Cuba at 1,148 at the end of November 2024. The release announced this Tuesday represents just under half of them.
On the other hand, the organization Justicia 11J assured at the end of last year that 554 people who participated in the anti-government protests of July 2021 (11J), the largest in decades, remained behind bars with sentences of up to more than 20 years in prison.
“The Government of Cuba has remained in communication with Pope Francis and his representatives and, as in the past, has informed His Holiness about processes of review and release of people deprived of liberty, a practice that is common in our system of justice,” said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Likewise, the island Executive stressed that between 2023 and 2024 “more than 10,000 people” imprisoned received “different types of benefits provided for in the law.” And that this decision is in accordance with the “spirit of the Ordinary Jubilee”, the great Catholic event that is celebrated every 25 years.
The announcement was made official after the United States Government made official the island’s withdrawal from the list of countries sponsoring terrorism.
According to senior officials from the outgoing Administration of Democrat Joe Biden, Washington made the decision to promote the release of Cuban prisoners, as part of a process in which the Vatican mediated.
For its part, Havana highlighted the measure, although it criticized the maintenance of the bulk of the US sanctions against the island. He also stressed that this should have been taken “without demanding anything in return and without creating pretexts to justify inaction.”
