Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Cuba Holding 114 Political Prisoners, Opposition Says

6/24/2014

HAVANA – The number of political prisoners in Cuba has climbed to 114, the opposition Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN) said on Monday.

“This total number represents a net increase over what our commission reported on Nov. 17, 2013, when the documented number of such convicts was 102,” the commission said in a communique.

The CCDHRN includes on its list the 12 dissidents sentenced in the so-called Black Spring of 2003 and who are now out on parole, a condition that prevents them from traveling abroad.

Of the 114 political prisoners, at least 80 “are peaceful dissidents,” the commission said.

Only eight of the 114 detainees were part of small armed anti-Castro expeditions coming from Florida, the CCDHRN said.

The commission noted the case of Sonia Garro, a member of the Ladies in White group, and her companion Eugenio Hernandez, who have been “locked up without a trial, in high security prisons, since March 18, 2012.”

In mid-2010, President Raul Castro, with the mediation of the Catholic Church, opened a process of freeing political prisoners, which led to the gradual release of more than 100 people, though most left prison on condition that they would go into exile in Spain.

In late 2011, the island’s government awarded a massive pardon to almost 3,000 prisoners of all kinds, including seven cases of political prisoners.


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