Dissidents Free but Questions Hang Over US-Cuba Deal

Dissidents Free but Questions Hang Over US-Cuba Deal
HAVANA — Jan 8, 2015, 12:17 AM ET
By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ and MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN Associated Press

Three dissidents were free Thursday after being abruptly released in
what a leading human rights advocate said was part of Cuba's deal with
Washington to release 53 members of the island's political opposition.

Neither the Obama administration nor the Cuban government spoke publicly
about the releases, adding to the unanswered questions swirling around
the deal and the broader detente that the two countries announced Dec. 17.

President Barack Obama ended five decades of official U.S. hostility
toward communist-governed Cuba by announcing that, along with an
exchange of men held on espionage charges, he would move toward full
diplomatic ties, drop regime change as a U.S. goal and use his executive
authority to punch holes in the longstanding trade embargo.

His Cuban counterpart, Raul Castro, welcomed the announcement but said
detente would not lead Cuba to change its single-party political system
or centrally planned economy.

U.S. officials told reporters on Dec. 17 that Cuba had agreed to free
the 53 detainees, considered by Washington to be high-priority political
prisoners. Castro said they would be released in "a unilateral way." But
since then, neither Cuba nor the United States has publicly identified
anyone on the list or announced they have gone free.

Facing criticism at home, U.S. officials said they never expected Cuba
to move immediately to release the prisoners. They said the U.S. was
avoiding public complaints that could provoke a backlash from Cuban
officials.

For many Cuban-Americans and U.S. conservatives, the apparent lack of
movement supported complaints that Obama's secretly negotiated deal was
too opaque and had failed to win sufficient concessions from Cuba.

"It's unfair for us Cubans and Cuban-Americans not to be able to
influence this situation that has such a tremendous relevance for the
future of Cuba," said Francisco "Pepe" Hernandez, president of the Cuban
American National Foundation.

On Wednesday, the head of Cuba's Human Rights and Reconciliation
Commission, Elizardo Sanchez, told The Associated Press that 19-year-old
twins Diango Vargas Martin and Bianko Vargas Martin had been released
without any of the judicial procedures that normally precede the end of
political cases. A few hours later, he said a third dissident, Enrique
Figuerola Miranda, was let go under similar circumstances.

Sanchez said he believed the three releases were the start of a wider
liberation of political prisoners. If he is right, the criticism of the
prisoner deal could quickly lose momentum.

But clarity about the fate of the prisoners would answer only one of the
questions still hanging over the U.S.-Cuba deal worked out by small
teams of negotiators behind closed doors over the 18 months leading up
to the announcement.

Relatives of Rolando Sarraff Trujillo, a U.S. spy released under last
month's deal, say they are puzzled about why they have yet to hear from
him. And Cubans are wondering why former President Fidel Castro has said
nothing in public more than three weeks after the announcement.

The freed twin brothers were members of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, a
small dissident group considered to be the country's most vehemently
anti-government.

Source: Dissidents Free but Questions Hang Over US-Cuba Deal - ABC News
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http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/dissidents-free-questions-hang-us-cuba-deal-28074507