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.”
While he is happy to be home with his wife and 5-year-old son who hardly knows him, Mr. Ferrer said his position has always been clear, and he even recorded it in an audio message from prison.
“I said clearly: I would never be grateful for my release if it came in an exchange that was an unclear, unethical, undignified agreement,” he said. “I said verbatim: I prefer death to owing my release to an undignified agreement.”
The Cuban government made a mockery of both Biden and the Vatican, which should be taking a firmer stance against human rights violations, he said.
Negotiations to free the prisoners were set in motion by a request from Pope Francis, who tasked one of his closest advisers, Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, the former archbishop of Boston, to relay messages.
Cardinal O’Malley said Mr. Ferrer was being a bit unfair in his criticisms, because the church wants to improve conditions in Cuba, and a better relationship with the United States is crucial, alluding to the severe shortages on the island that many attribute to tough U.S. economic sanctions.
While he agreed that protesters convicted of sedition and other crimes should never have been jailed in the first place, “does that mean we should have left them there?” he said.
“I understand Mr. Ferrer has suffered a lot, and is very anxious to see this government fall,” he added, but, “making the Cuban people suffer is not the solution.”
The negotiations were conducted over the past three years, with at least a dozen meetings in Havana, New York and Washington, and with the cardinal talking to the foreign ministers and presidents of both countries.
“The Holy Father was urging them to release the prisoners and also try to establish better relations with the United States,” Cardenal O’Malley said in a telephone interview.
The first meeting took place in Havana during the pandemic, not long after the arrests. He met with President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez and former President Raúl Castro, who came to the nunciature, the Holy See’s diplomatic mission in Havana.
Mr. Castro, he said, spoke fondly about his time at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in Havana.
The cardinal later made a second visit to Cuba and then also delivered letters from the pope to President Biden, with whom he spoke on the phone.
The pope designated 2025 a jubilee year for the church, a special period of forgiveness during which millions of pilgrims are expected to visit Rome. The message to the Cuban government was simple: “The time of jubilee is a time of liberation of prisoners,” Cardinal O’Malley said.
At first, he said, Cuban government officials seemed to have been “spooked” by the outpouring of discontent at the 2021 protest, particularly since much of it was streamed live on Facebook from cities around the country. The government blamed activist groups in the United States for fueling the movement, he said.
“They were upset that the U.S. would tolerate this kind of subversive activity emanating from the States,” he said. “I tried to say: Regardless of what the origin of the demonstration was and the culpability of whoever, the Holy Father was looking at this as a humanitarian crisis and wanted to ask for clemency for these prisoners.”
The request seemed more palatable to Cuban officials, because it came from the church — but it still took years, he said. The Biden administration steadfastly refused to take any action regarding Cuba’s inclusion on the state sponsors of terrorism while so many protesters were still behind bars, the cardinal added.
The fact that President-elect Trump was heading back to the White House undoubtedly played a role in the Cubans’ decision-making, the cardinal said.
“The door was closing for an opportunity,” he said. “I am not sure what President Trump will eventually do, but judging from his first term in office, for the Cubans, I think that was sobering — that if there was going to be any opportunity for rapprochement, it would have to be now.”
The Cuban government gave the impression they preferred the released prisoners be forced into exile, but the U.S. government asked for them to be allowed to stay home if that was their preference, he said.
Several past mass prisoner releases involved involuntary exile to Spain.
The talks were sometimes frustrating, because the Cuban government was hesitant to release prisoners.
He said he kept going back to the Cuban government again and again, until he felt like the widow in the Book of Luke’s Parable of the Persistent Widow, who repeatedly returns to a stubborn judge seeking justice until he finally relents.
“I felt as long as they were willing to talk, we would talk,” he said.
In public statements since the deal was announced, the Cuban government sought to convey the mass release as standard operating procedure in a nation of laws.
The vice president of Cuba’s Supreme Court, Maricela Sosa Ravelo, in an interview on Cuban state television, stressed that the prisoners were being granted “early release” akin to parole, and were still under the authority of the criminal justice system.
“This is not amnesty or a pardon,” she said.
Mr. Ferrer, who had previously served eight years in prison during a 2003 crackdown on the opposition, said he refused to sign a document that outlined the conditions for his release, which included a monthly check-in with the court.
“I told them: Let’s not waste time, leave me in prison, so you don’t have to invent a judicial farce in the future,” he said.
He said he had spent nearly three months in solitary confinement, eating food he believed was poisoned, because he had developed migraines and had begun to hallucinate that the walls were closing in on him. He went long stretches without being able to see or call his family or access pencil or paper.
In 2019, Mr. Ferrer was accused of assaulting and kidnapping a man, an allegation he denied. He was sentenced to four years in prison, but in 2020 was released to house arrest.
When he left his house on July 11, 2021 to attend the massive protests sweeping the nation, he was quickly arrested and sent back to prison to serve the entire sentence, with no credit for time served at home.
“I was fed the worst food anyone can imagine a human being eating,’’ Mr. Ferrer said.
Some inmate quarters were infested with bedbugs, he said, and other prisoners whose families could not afford to bring them food appeared severely malnourished.
“I saw horrors there,” he said.
Mr. Ferrer hopes the church will take a more aggressive role in defense of human rights in Cuba, and that he can spend his time home trying to rebuild a dissident movement fractured by imprisonments and forced banishment.
“I am sure that this movie will end with the liberation and democratization of Cuba and with a friendly Cuba allied to the West,” he said. “I may not live to see this moment, but wherever my spirit is, I will enjoy it very much. And if I live to see this moment, by God, it will be the happiest moment of my life.”
The post Freed Cuban Dissident: The Church and Biden Got Duped appeared first on New York Times.
