Cuba to release political prisoners

HAVANA – The Roman Catholic Church said Wednesday that Cuba has agreed to free 52 political prisoners and let them leave the country in what would be the island’s largest mass liberation of dissidents since Pope John Paul II visited in 1998.

Five are to be released into exile in Spain as soon as possible, while the remaining 47 will be let go in “a process that will take three or four months starting now,” said Havana’s archbishop, Cardinal Jaime Ortega.

The deal was announced following a meeting between President Raul Castro and Ortega. Also participating was visiting Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos and his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez.

The scope of the agreement “is a surprise,” said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation. “We were hoping for a significant release of prisoners, but not this.”

Ortega said that those to be released were all members of a group of 75 leading political opposition activists, community organizers and journalists who report on Cuba in defiance of state controls on media. They were rounded up in a crackdown on dissent in March 2003.

Some of the 75 original prisoners had previously been freed for health reasons or after completing their terms, or were allowed into exile in Spain. But at least 52 have remained behind bars – most serving lengthy prison terms on charges of conspiring with Washington to destabilize Cuba’s political system.

If the agreement holds, it would be the largest group of political prisoners freed since the government released 299 inmates in a general amnesty following the pope’s visit 12 years ago.

Cuba’s Catholic Church has recently become a major political voice on the island, though only with the consent of the Castro government.

In May, Ortega negotiated an end to a ban on marches by a small group of wives and mothers of political prisoners known as the Ladies in White.