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.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS