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The legal organization Cubalex reported this Friday on the persistent lack of transparency in the release process of more than two thousand people announced by the Cuban government last Thursday, in the context of Holy Week.
The regime presented the measure as a humanitarian and sovereign gesture, based on criteria such as "good behavior, partial completion of the sentence, and health status," and it included among the beneficiaries young people, women, individuals over 60 years old, foreigners, and Cubans living abroad.
However, Cubalex warned that the authorities did not publish an official list of the individuals benefiting nor clarified whether the pardon includes individuals imprisoned for political reasons. "This lack of transparency not only makes it impossible to verify the true scope of the measure, but also obscures potential arbitrary exclusions and reinforces the discretion with which these decisions are handled," the organization stated in its declaration.
The information received by Cubalex from five prisons indicates that the beneficiaries have mostly been individuals convicted of common crimes who were already eligible for parole, not political prisoners.
A key element of exclusion is the category of "crimes against authority," which the regime excluded from the pardon and is precisely the one most frequently applied to protesters, dissidents, and activists, especially those detained following the protests of July 11, 2021. Prisoners Defenders was straightforward about this: "We don't have high hopes for too many political prisoners being released."
Cubalex also warned about the legal limitations of the measure: according to Article 93 of the Cuban Penal Code, a pardon only extinguishes the main penalty and not additional sanctions, and does not imply the cancellation of criminal records or civil liability, unless explicitly stated.
For Cubalex, the pattern is historical and deliberate. The organization documented a timeline of pardons since 1978, which includes the visits of Pope John Paul II in 1998, Pope Benedict XVI in 2011, and Pope Francis in 2015, as well as the approval of the new Constitution in 2019 and the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when 10,000 common prisoners were released without benefiting any political prisoner. "Historically, the use of pardons in Cuba has served more as a tool for political exchange and propaganda than as an act of justice," the organization stated.
"Without public, verifiable, and accessible information, these measures lack real guarantees and are more aligned with strategic interests than with a genuine commitment to human rights," concluded Cubalex, which demands the release of all individuals imprisoned for political reasons in Cuba.
This is the second release of prisoners in 2026. The first occurred on March 12, when the government announced the release of 51 detainees as a gesture of "goodwill" towards the Vatican, of which Cubalex confirmed 26 were political prisoners. Previously, in January 2025, Cuba released 553 individuals following negotiations with the United States and the Vatican; Cubalex confirmed that 205 had political charges, at least seven were returned to prison, and one was forced into exile.
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