Cuba frees 2,991 prisoners

Cuba well into process of freeing 2,900 pardoned prisoners

Associated Press

HAVANA — Cuba appeared to be making quick progress in meeting a pledge to free 2,900 pardoned prisoners, most of them convicted of minor crimes, even as a top human rights official on the island criticized the year-end amnesty as a “media show.”

Human rights official Elizardo Sanchez and dissidents on the Communist-run island said Wednesday that authorities had released more than 2,500 inmates. The government has published a list of names of those pardoned in the Official Gazette, but has not said how the liberations announced by President Raul Castro on Friday are going. Castro said he was granting the pardons in connection with an upcoming visit by Pope Benedict XVI.

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