On Monday, the main court of Cuba declared on Monday that 553 prisoners were released after an intermediate agreement to the Vatican that seemed to be in Limbo after the President of the United States Donald Trump canceled a promise from the Biden government to relieve penalties in the country.
In January, former president Joe Biden agreed to remove Cuba from a list of terrorism in the United States in exchange for the release of prisoners in negotiations with the Catholic Church.
Trump resolved the biden agreement by entering in office, putting Cuba again on the list, applying new penalties to the island and guiding the communist government to temporarily suspend the release of prisoners.
But Cuba’s state media declared on Monday in the night news of the TV that the judicial authorities confirmed the “first liberation” of 553 prisoners.
“The authorities of the popular Supreme Court of Cuba say that these 553 people are already free and that the process has been completed,” says the report.
Human rights groups began to report a new flow of prisoners issued by the arrests of the island last week, despite Trump’s decision to give up the agreement with Biden. The groups, however, said that some of the releases seemed to have ordinary criminals.
The Biden government had initially stated that Cuba would release the “political prisoners” as part of the wider agreement.
But Cuba did not specify, saying that it would gradually release “553 people sanctioned for various crimes”.
The United States, the European Union, the Catholic Church and the surveillance groups have long pressed Cuba to release hundreds of demonstrators arrested after the protests against the government on 11 July 2021, the largest from Fidel Castro’s revolution in 1959.
The Cuban authorities say that the arrested demonstrators committed crimes ranging from vandalism and sections from criminal fire.
The surveillance groups said that about 200 prisoners related to protests had been released by the end of last week, although they said that the scarcity of information ensured that they were safe.
On Monday, the report of the Cuban state media did not specify how many of the 553 prisoners issued pursuant to the negotiation agreement with the Vatican had been detained in relation to the protests of 2021.
Source: Terra
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