Havana, Washington resume debate over a prisoner exchange
By Gerardo Arreola
From the Mexican newspaper La Jornada
HAVANA – Cuba and the United States raised the pressure last weekend to demand the mutual release of prisoners, an exchange that the island invoked on the basis of “gesture for gesture.”
“The gesture is there. Cuba has released these prisoners, some of whom have already traveled to Spain,” said Adriana Pérez, wife of Gerardo Hernández, one of the five Cuban agents imprisoned in the U.S. since 1998, alluding to Cuba’s recent release of oppositionists.
Last Friday, addressing members of the Communist Youth, Fidel Castro raised the possibility that President Barack Obama will release the five, same as Obama agreed to the exchange of spies with Russia three weeks ago.
President Raúl Castro publicly proposed, in December 2008 and April 2009, that the five be freed in exchange for the remaining prisoners of the group of 75 dissidents arrested in 2003 on the island, not in an explicit exchange, but under the “gesture-for-gesture” formula.
However, also last Friday, in Trinidad-Tobago, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Arturo Valenzuela, pointed out that there is another ingredient in the equation when he demanded the release of his compatriot Alan Gross, held in Havana since December 2009.
Gross, 60, held at the headquarters of State Security, “is not feeling well and has lost 36 kilos in more than six months,” lamented Valenzuela.
Last Sunday, the National Assembly of the People’s Power, Cuba’s Parliament, asked the U.S. government to remove Hernández from a punishment cell, where he faces threats to “his physical integrity” at a time when he is making a habeas corpus appeal and requires medical attention.
“We expect a gesture, even if only related to the visas,” Adriana Pérez told reporters, recalling that in 12 years the U.S. has not allowed her to enter the country to visit her 45-year-old husband.
The “gesture-for-gesture” formula worked in 1978, when Cuba and the United States agreed on a mutual release of prisoners.
Cuba admits that its five agents reported plans to attack the island from the United States, but contends that their actions do not qualify as spying or damaged U.S. national security. The 75 were convicted on charges of conspiring with Washington to subvert the Cuban system.
Twenty of them went to Spain this month. Gross has not been formally indicted, but Cuban authorities have said that he committed “very serious” crimes by distributing satellite communication equipment in Cuba.
