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| US to send highest-level delegation to Havana as Cuba releases prisoners | |
| (4 months later) | |
| The US will send its highest-level delegation in decades to Havana later this month, for talks on migration and normalising relations between the countries after decades of cold war hostility. | |
| The assistant secretary of state Roberta Jacobson, the top US diplomat for Latin America, will visit Cuba for the meetings on 21 and 22 January, which were originally scheduled to discuss migration but will now cover the re-establishment of diplomatic relations and formally reopening embassies in Washington and Havana. | |
| The State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said the talks will focus on how to “create safe, legal and orderly migration between the United States and Cuba”. | |
| But they also seek to advance the process initiated by presidents Barack Obama and Raúl Castro last month to re-establish US-Cuban relations after more than 50 years of estrangement. Although the two countries suspended diplomatic relations in 1961, they have held regular talks on migration. | |
| Meanwhile, opposition groups in Cuba said that eight political detainees have been released over the past 24 hours, including three on Wednesday, as Cuba moves to fulfil another element of its deal with the US. | |
| All but one of the released prisoners were members of the dissident Patriotic Union of Cuba (Unpacu). | |
| They had all been accused of relatively minor offences. | |
| The latest Unpacu detainees to be freed were Ernesto Riveri Gascón, Lázaro Romero Hurtado, Emilio Plana Robert, and Yohannes Arce Sarmientos, Unpacu said. | |
| Romero was arrested in 2012 and sentenced to four years behind bars on charges including making a public disturbance and threats, apparently during a confrontation with police. Riveri was given two years on the same charges. | |
| Plana was detained in 2012 and given a three-and-a-half-year term for his activities with the opposition, dissidents said, and Arce had been awaiting sentencing after being arrested last year on similar allegations. | |
| Another detainee freed on Thursday was named by dissidents as José Manuel Rodríguez Navarro. They said he was detained in 2013 and sentenced to four years in prison, allegedly for writing letters denouncing Cuba’s government. | |
| Cuba’s government does not comment on police actions involving detentions, and has said nothing about this week’s releases. It typically describes dissidents as being in the pay of the United States. | |
| Elizardo Sánchez, president of the dissident Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which monitors such detentions, said more releases were expected on Thursday and over the coming days. | |
| “That could indicate the start of the process … under which around 50 Cuban political prisoners would be released from custody,” Sánchez said in a statement. | |
| José Daniel Ferrer, executive secretary of Unpacu, said 36 members of his organisation remained in custody. | |
| All eight of those freed so far appear on an informal list drawn up by dissidents, but it is not known if they were on the official list of 53. | |
| Details about the prisoners who will be freed have been withheld by both governments, providing ammunition for Republican congressional opponents and other hardline critics of the policy shift. | |
| One US congressional aide, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters on Wednesday that Cuba was resisting the release of some prisoners on the list, but a White House official denied that, saying the US government fully expected all 53 to be liberated. |