Cuba begins to release prisoners after announcing a pardon for more than 2,000 people

About twenty detainees left the La Lima prison, in the east of Havana, at dawn. Those released hugged and cried with relatives waiting outside the prison. “Thank you to the Pope,” shouted some of them who also crossed themselves.

These releases come shortly after the US government eased the oil blockade that was established in January over Cuba, by allowing the entry this week of a ship with crude oil from Russia.

On March 12, the Cuban government had announced the early release of 51 prisoners as a show of “good will” toward the Vatican, a historic mediator between Havana and Washington.

The United States said it was aware of the releases and demanded that Havana “immediately release the hundreds of other brave Cuban patriots who remain unjustly detained,” according to a State Department spokesperson.

The Cuban government did not give the names of the pardoned people or specify the crimes covered by the pardon, but noted that the releases take into account the type of crime, conduct in prison, health reasons and time spent in prison.

“Thank you for this opportunity you gave us,” Albis Gaínza, 46, who was serving six years in prison for robbery and served three, told AFP.

“This needs to continue” and “they release more” prisoners, said Gaínza, who stated that he could not sleep since he found out about the pardons.

Among those pardoned are “young people, women, adults over 60 years of age,” as well as “foreigners and Cuban citizens residing abroad,” according to the official text.

“This is an opportunity that is only given once in a lifetime” and “one has suffered too much and one’s mothers,” said Brian Pérez, 20 years old and serving a suspension due to injury.

Damián Fariñas, also 20 years old, said that his release is “a very great blessing” that “fills his family with happiness.” This young man had 14 months left to serve his sentence for robbery.

The pardon rules out those people who committed crimes of sexual assault, pedophilia with violence, murder, manslaughter, drugs, robbery and robbery with violence or force with the use of weapons”, as well as “corruption of minors, crimes against authority, repeat offenders and multiple repeat offenders.”

The human rights defense group Justicia 11J considered “especially worrying the mention of the so-called ‘crimes against authority’, which include figures such as attack, resistance and contempt.”

In a statement, this NGO called attention to the fact that these criminal figures are used by the Cuban authorities to “criminalize” opposition activity.

According to Justice 11J, Cuba has 775 people detained for political reasons.

After noon this Friday, the NGO Cubalex, based in Miami, had not been able to confirm the release “of any political prisoner,” according to its director Laritza Diversent told AFP.

Cubalex He questioned the “lack of transparency in this process” and recalled that “historically, the use of pardon in Cuba has served as a tool of political exchange and propaganda, rather than as an act of justice.”

President Donald Trump does not hide his desire for regime change in Cuba, considered by Washington an “exceptional threat” to the national security of the United States due to its close relations with Russia, China and Iran.

The government of Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel announced two weeks ago that it maintains talks with the United States.

“There is a whole speech and staging” as if the pardon “had nothing to do with the negotiations, when clearly it does,” Andrés Pertierra, a historian of Cuba at the University of Wisconsin, in the United States, told AFP.