The human rights organization Prisoners Defenders revealed in a report on Tuesday that 198 political prisoners Cuba claimed to free as a gesture of solidarity with the Vatican in January were already eligible for release from prison, either because they completed their sentences or were eligible for house arrest.
The Cuban Communist Party made a grand declaration in January that it would free 553 convicts after a plea from Pope Francis to show clemency to the nation’s political prisoners. The Castro regime claimed that it would free the prisoners “in the spirit of the Ordinary Jubilee of the year 2025 declared by His Holiness” and timed the announcement to coincide with former President Joe Biden announcing, less than a week before the end of his term, that he would remove Cuba from the State Department’s State Sponsors of Terrorism list. While Cuban officials never directly linked the release to Biden’s measure, some reports suggested that the events were related.
Pope Francis praised the Castro regime for its “gesture of great hope,” proclaiming, “I hope that in the months to come, initiatives of this kind will continue to be undertaken in the different parts of the world, infusing confidence in the journey of individuals and peoples.”
It remains unclear at press time exactly who will be eligible to be on the list of 533 released from prison or whether they will be fully liberated or forced into house arrest. Prisoners Defenders, a human rights organization that focuses its efforts on advocating for prisoners of conscience in Cuba, asserted in a report published on Tuesday that the regime appeared to purposefully confuse international audiences by creating the illusion that it would free hundreds of political prisoners when, in reality, many would be common criminals.
“The statistic of 553 political prisoners coincides in good measure with the auditories of the peaceful protesters who are still in prison as a result, solely, of the protests on July 11 and 12, 2021, and facts immediately prior,” Prisoners Defenders observed. Most of these remain behind bars, however.
Prisoners Defenders has identified only 198 of the 533 released as political prisoners – and found that 94 percent of them were either eligible for release or about the be released in the near future, meaning the Cuban government did not concede any significant measure of freedom to them as a result of the Vatican agreement.
According to the organization, 31 of the 198 freed had already completed their prison sentences, but were kept in prison for no reason. Another two had four months or less left on their sentences, while 57 would have been freed at the latest in 18 months. Another 67 prisoners were facing 18 to 42 months left on their sentences.
“In addition, the un-prisoned prisoners have not been ‘liberated,’ as their convictions remain intact and whole and are in conditions that violate all their human rights,” the organization asserted.
Javier Larrondo, the president of Prisoners Defenders, explained in a message shared with Breitbart News that many of those freed were eligible for at least conditional release within the next year. The provisions of the agreement, he explained, were “allowing the Cuban regime to conduct a fraudulent release, composed mostly of prisoners who should have been freed already or were eligible for benefits.”
Larrondo emphasized that “the un-prisoned prisoners were not freed,” as many will be subject to forced labor, have no freedom of expression, and cannot speak to human rights groups or engage in anything vaguely described as “counterrevolutionary” activity.
“The protesters and prisoners of conscience released from prison in Cuba, a total of 198, will continue serving their entire sentences,” the Prisoners Defenders report explained, “and will do so under two types of penal subcategories, conditional release and extrapenal license, under grave and concrete threats of returning to prison.”
Prisoners Defenders concluded criticizing the Biden administration for removing Cuba from the state sponsorship list and expressing skepticism as to the efficacy of policies that issue concessions to the violent communist regime, as occurred under Biden and former President Barack Obama.
“We at Prisoners Defenders do not believe that this type of strategy has any effect whatsoever on totalitarian states that foster, support, and finance international terrorism,” the organization declared, “while they exercise state terrorism against their own people at the same time.”
Biden’s move to remove Cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list lasted less than a week. President Donald Trump restored Cuba to its position on the list on Inauguration Day as one of the first acts of his second term in office. Cuba was placed on the list as a result of its longstanding relationship with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a communist terrorist organization, as well as its support and cooperation with jihadist entities such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
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