Cuba releases last of 553 prisoners under Biden-era deal

Cuba has granted early release to 553 prisoners, completing a deal struck in the final days of Joe Biden's US presidency that his successor Donald Trump later abandoned, a Supreme Court official said Monday.

"The process was successfully completed," the court's vice president Maricela Soza Ravelo said on state television, noting that 378 applications had been filed in January and 175 in February.

In one of his final official acts, Biden on January 14 removed Cuba from a US list of state terror sponsors in return for the communist island agreeing to free 553 prisoners.

But six days later marked the swearing-in of Trump, who swiftly overturned the Vatican-mediated deal after just 192 confirmed releases of people dubbed "political prisoners" by rights groups.

Most had been rounded up in a crackdown on rare mass protests against the Cuban government in July 2021.

The prisoner releases stopped after Trump's order, but then resumed sporadically in the ensuing weeks, according to several human rights groups.

Cuban authorities have never made public a list of the prisoners being released, nor a timetable.

The court's vice president said the release of the prisoners could be revoked, adding that they were required to "maintain social behavior in accordance with our socialist norms."

- Demands for transparency -

According to the "Todos" platform, which collates information from several non-governmental organizations, 212 people have been released, including opposition leader Jose Daniel Ferrer and dissident Felix Navarro.

Ferrer was the most high-profile of 127 prisoners released in January, days before Trump returned to the White House.

Dissident artists Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara and Maykel Osorbo, who have been sentenced to five and seven years in prison, respectively, have not been released.

Rapper Osorbo, co-author of the anti-government protests anthem "Patria y Vida" ("Homeland and Life"), was arrested in May 2021 and convicted of disorderly conduct, contempt of court and assault.

Two mothers of other prisoners told AFP that their sons had not been released.

The Mexico-based NGO Justicia 11J, named after the date of the 2021 protests, expressed concern on Monday, saying they had received reports suggesting that "a significant portion of those released are common prisoners" rather than political prisoners.

"We demand transparency and accountability regarding this process. We urge international actors and human rights organizations to act urgently and to demand from the Cuban state the official list of beneficiaries, with clear information on the selection criteria," it added.

According to official figures, around 500 demonstrators arrested over the July 2021 protests have been sentenced, in some cases to up to 25 years in prison.

Some have already been released after serving their sentences.

Human rights NGOs and the US embassy in Havana estimate that there are around 1,000 political prisoners on the island.