More than 2,500 Freed in Cuba Amnesty

Chicago Tribune

Rosa Tania Valdes

Reuters

12:18 p.m. CST, December 27, 2011

HAVANA (Reuters) - More than 2,500 Cuban prisoners have been released in recent days under a New Year's amnesty announced before a visit next spring by Pope Benedict XVI, a local human rights group said on Tuesday.

Cuban President Raul Castro said last Friday that the ruling Council of State had granted amnesty to more than 2,900 common prisoners.

Castro said the amnesty was a "humanitarian gesture" and had also "taken into account" an upcoming papal visit and requests by, among others, top Roman Catholic Church officials in Cuba and relatives of the prisoners.

"We estimate that more than 2,500 prisoners have been released in all the provinces, and the process continues," Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights, told Reuters.

The government and official media have not commented on the releases.

Cuban President Raul Castro said on Friday the amnesty covered people more than 60 years of age, prisoners who are ill, women and some young prisoners who had no previous criminal history, as well as a few prisoners who had been convicted for crimes against "the security of the state."

The Cuban president said 86 foreigners from 25 countries convicted of committing crimes in Cuba were also on the amnesty list.

A number of Western diplomats said on Tuesday they were waiting to be contacted by Cuban authorities about their nationals in Cuban jails.