Cuba to improve conditions of prisoners: source
Cuba has agreed to move political prisoners held in far-off jails to facilities closer to their hometowns and transfer sick prisoners to hospitals, a dissident said on Saturday, following talks between Catholic Church leaders and “President” Raul Castro this week.
Reuters~Guillermo Farinas, on a hunger strike for 88 days demanding ill prisoners be released, told Reuters in a telephone interview that he received the news from a bishop who visited him in the hospital where he is being fed intravenously.
A Catholic Church source, speaking on condition his name not be used, confirmed what Farinas said. “Everything appears that is what will happen,” he said.
Cardinal Jaime Ortega and Archbishop of Santiago de Cuba Dionisio Garcia, who heads the Cuban Bishops’ Conference, held a four-and-a-half-hour meeting with Castro in Havana on Wednesday which they both described as positive.
Farinas said Prelate Juan Dios Hernandez, the auxiliary bishop of Havana, brought him the message from Ortega after the cardinal was informed by the government that measures were being taken as agreed in the meeting.
“These are first the transfer of all the prisoners to their respective provinces of residence, and the transfer also of all sick prisoners to hospitals,” Farinas said.
He said he was told a second meeting would be held next week toward “resolving the situation of the prisoners.”
There was no immediate word from Cuban officials.
Wednesday’s meeting was the Cuban Catholic Church leaders’ first talks with Castro since he took over the presidency of the Communist-ruled island from his ailing elder brother Fidel Castro in 2008.
“The Church is interested in there being some kind of relief in the situation of the prisoners, which could include the freeing of some of them, and that is what we’re talking about,” Ortega said during a news conference on Thursday.
He said the subject was being discussed seriously, but neither he nor Garcia offered specific details of what steps the Cuban government might take over the political prisoners.
The cardinal added the talks would continue.
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