Cuban President Raul Castro made an unprecedented offer on Thursday to exchange political dissidents jailed in his country for five Cubans imprisoned in the US for espionage.
Castro, on his first official visit to Brazil, also reiterated Cuba’s willingness to discuss the US’ 46-year-old economic embargo with US president-elect Barack Obama.
Answering a reporter’s question about political prisoners in Cuba, Castro said he would consider releasing some as a gesture to opening talks with the new administration.
But he said the US would need to reciprocate.
“Let’s make a gesture for a gesture,” said Castro, who took over in February from his ailing brother, Fidel. “We will send those prisoners you talk about [to the United States] with their families. But give us back our five heroes.”
He was referring to the so-called “Cuban Five,” who were convicted in 2001 on espionage charges and are lionized in Cuba as heroes. Cuban exile groups in the US say they were justly punished.
US State Department spokeswoman Heidi Bronke said the jailed dissidents should be released immediately without conditions.
“The issue of political prisoners in Cuba who are being held against their will for peaceful protests is independent of the case of the five Cubans that have been tried and convicted,” she said.
Raul Castro has never publicly mentioned the possibility of releasing any political prisoners. But it seemed unlikely that Cuba would free all 219 currently listed by the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconcilation, which also counts people convicted of violent acts.
The commission’s list, last released nearly six months ago, includes several Central Americans convicted of placing explosive devices in tourist hotels, one of which killed an Italian tourist.
Relatives of the five men imprisoned in the US could not be immediately reached for comment.
But Laura Pollan, wife of political prisoner Hector Maseda, said Castro’s offer showed “a lack of respect, making these comments without knowing what the prisoners think.”
The five arrested in 1998 admitted being Cuban agents but said they were not spying on the US, only on US-based exile groups planning “terrorist” actions.
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