Reports the Capitol Hill Cubans blog.
According to The Miami Herald:
Cuba's best-known political prisoner and nine others will refuse to leave for Spain if freed, relatives said, while the seven former prisoners who arrived in Madrid on Tuesday vowed to continue their activism from exile [...]

Although Cuba's leading political prisoner, Oscar Elías Biscet, was not part of the 75, his name has been included in some versions of the lists of dissidents to be released under the Castro-church agreement.

Biscet has already decided not to go into exile and remain in Cuba as a human rights activist if he's freed, his wife of 19 years, Elsa Morejón, told El Nuevo Herald by telephone from Havana.

"He has always said no, and he's still saying no" to leaving the island, added Morejón, who spoke Saturday by phone with Biscet at Havana's Combinado del Este prison. "And I respect his position."

Morejón said Biscet also told her Havana Cardinal Jaime Ortega had not phoned him to ask if he wanted to leave the island -- as Ortega has done with most of the others.

Prison authorities also have told him nothing about a possible release.

Biscet, 49, a physician last arrested in 2002 and now serving a 25-year sentence, was detained dozens of times between 1997 and 1999.

From 1999 until today, he was free only 36 days. In 2007, he won the U.S. Medal of Freedom, awarded by the George W. Bush administration.

Morejón identified the other prisoners refusing to go into exile -- all part of the 75 -- as Eduardo Diaz Fleitas, Regis Iglesias Ramirez, Pedro Argüelles Moran, Librado Linares, Jose Daniel Ferrer, Arnaldo Lauzerique, Ivan Hernández Carrillo, Fidel Suarez Cruz and Diosdado Gonzalez Marrero.

Neither Cuban nor church authorities have explained what would happen to the political prisoners who refuse to move abroad once they are freed.

for the freedom of all cuban political prisoners
| Share

0 Comments: