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U.S.|Freed Cuban Dissident: The Church and Biden Got Duped
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/17/us/biden-cuban-prisoners-church.html
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Hundreds more Cuban dissidents are expected to be released in the coming days in a deal with President Biden, but even a top beneficiary is balking.
Jan. 17, 2025Updated 5:44 p.m. ET
José Daniel Ferrer, a former fisherman who became one of Cuba’s leading human rights figures, was released from prison Thursday in a deal brokered by the Biden administration. But in some ways, he said he would have preferred to have remained locked up.
Mr. Ferrer, 54, who was jailed in 2021 after trying to attend a protest against the communist government, was the most high-profile dissident to benefit from secret talks facilitated by the Catholic Church.
The negotiations resulted this week in the Biden administration removing Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, which, if not overturned by President-elect Donald J. Trump, would allow Cuba access to international financing and could help its battered tourism industry.
The Cuban government, in return, agreed to release 553 inmates, many of whom participated in the massive street demonstrations in the summer of 2021 that landed Mr. Ferrer behind bars.
As prisoners begin to trickle out of prison with conditions on their release, some human rights advocates are denouncing the agreement as ill-advised and lopsided.
“The Biden administration made fools of themselves,” Mr. Ferrer said in a telephone interview from his home in Santiago de Cuba, the morning after his release. “In a gesture of supposed good will, they free a number of people who should never have been jailed, and then they want in exchange for that for the Church and the American government to make concessions. They are applauded, and the world sees that they are so generous.”
