HAVANA (AP) — At least five dissidents were free Thursday in what a leading human rights advocate said
was part of Cuba’s deal with Washington to release 53 members of the island’s political opposition.
the unanswered questions swirling around the deal and the broader detente that the two countries
announced Dec. 17.
President Barack Obama ended five decades of official U.S. hostility toward communist-governed Cuba by
announcing that, along with an exchange of men held on espionage charges, he would move toward full
diplomatic ties, drop regime change as a U.S. goal and use his executive authority to punch holes in the
longstanding trade embargo.
His Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, welcomed the announcement but said detente would not lead Cuba to
change its single-party political system or centrally planned economy.
U.S. officials told reporters on Dec. 17 that Cuba had agreed to free the 53 detainees, considered by
Washington to be high-priority political prisoners. Castro said they would be released in "a
unilateral way." But since then, neither Cuba nor the United States has publicly identified anyone
on the list or announced they have gone free.
Facing criticism at home, U.S. officials said they never expected Cuba to move immediately to release the
prisoners. They said the U.S. was avoiding public complaints that could provoke a backlash from Cuban
officials.
For many Cuban-Americans and U.S. conservatives, the apparent lack of movement supported complaints that
Obama’s secretly negotiated deal was too opaque and had failed to win sufficient concessions from Cuba.
"It’s unfair for us Cubans and Cuban-Americans not to be able to influence this situation that has
such a tremendous relevance for the future of Cuba," said Francisco "Pepe" Hernandez,
president of the Cuban American National Foundation.
On Wednesday, the head of Cuba’s Human Rights and Reconciliation Commission, Elizardo Sanchez, told The
Associated Press that 19-year-old twins Diango Vargas Martin and Bianko Vargas Martin had been released
without any of the judicial procedures that normally precede the end of political cases. A few hours
later, he said a third dissident, Enrique Figuerola Miranda, was let go under similar circumstances.
On Thursday morning, he said that prisoners Ernesto Riveri Gascon y Lazaro Romero Hurtado had also been
released.
Sanchez said he believed the releases were the start of a wider liberation of political prisoners. If he
is right, the criticism of the prisoner deal could quickly lose momentum.
But clarity about the fate of the prisoners would answer only one of the questions still hanging over the
U.S.-Cuba deal worked out by small teams of negotiators behind closed doors over the 18 months leading
up to the announcement.
Relatives of Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, a U.S. spy released under last month’s deal, say they are puzzled
about why they have yet to hear from him. And Cubans are wondering why former President Fidel Castro has
said nothing in public more than three weeks after the announcement.
All five men were members of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, a small dissident group considered to be the
country’s most vehemently anti-government.
According to Amnesty International, the twins were arrested in December 2012 as they tried to return to
their home in Santiago, where they lived with their mother, a member of the dissident group Ladies in
White. They had been held on charges of using violence or intimidation against a state official.
"They’re prisoners of conscience and they’ve been freed immediately and with no conditions,"
Sanchez said. Riveri and Romero were arrested in the same incident.
The twins’ mother, Miraida Martin, said her sons had been told they were being transferred to another
facility but once outside the prison in far eastern Cuba they were suddenly set free without
explanation.
"We think they’re on the list, but nothing’s been said about it," she said.
Hernandez, of the Cuban American National Foundation, said he had been informed by the White House that
Lady in White member Sonia Garro, her husband and a neighbor had been let go as part of the deal prior
to both governments’ announcement of warming relations.
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Andrea Rodriguez on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ARodriguezAP?lang=en
Michael Weissenstein on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mweissenstein
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