Cuban officials have announced that President Raul Castro will pardon more than 2,900 prisoners. The 2,900 prisoners include females, young adults without a major record, sick people, and people over the age of 60. The National Assembly also stated that 86 prisoners from 25 different countries will be pardoned. Read more after the jump.
Cuba will pardon more than 2,900 prisoners, the government said Friday in an official statement published on the state-run website Cubadebate.
The decision follows “numerous requests” from prisoners’ family members and religious institutions, and is a humanitarian gesture, the statement read.
Among those who might be freed are prisoners over the age of 60, and those who are sick, female or young with no previous criminal record.
It was not immediately clear whether Alan Gross, a jailed American, would be among those pardoned.
Cuban President Raul Castro, speaking to the National Assembly, said that 86 prisoners from 25 countries would be among those released in coming days.
He cited the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI as one of the motivations behind the move, which he said showed the “generosity and strength of the revolution.”
The pope has said he plans to visit Mexico and Cuba before Easter.
Gross was jailed in December 2009, when he was working as a subcontractor on a U.S. Agency for International Development project aimed at spreading democracy. Castro has accused him of importing satellite equipment to connect dissidents to the Internet, and this year Cuba’s highest court upheld the 15-year sentence imposed on Gross for committing crimes against the security of the state.
He has maintained his innocence and said he was just trying to help connect the Jewish community to the Internet.
