Cuba: On 13 October Cuba’s foreign ministry confirmed that prominent Cuban dissident José Daniel Ferrer, along with his family, had left Cuba for the US, in line with a request from the US government led by President Donald Trump. One of Cuba’s most well-known dissidents, Ferrer, who founded dissident group Unión Patriótica de Cuba (Unpacu) in 2011, was released from prison in January this year as part of a deal mediated by the Vatican whereby 553 prisoners would be released by the Cuban government led by President Miguel Díaz-Canel, as former US president Joe Biden (2021-2025) removed Cuba from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. However, after taking office on 20 January, Biden’s successor Donald Trump returned Cuba to the list and Ferrer was returned to prison in April. Named a prisoner of conscience by international NGO Amnesty International (AI) in 2003, Ferrer was imprisoned between 2003-2011 during the so-called ‘Black Spring’, a wave of government repression against dissidents, and has been arrested and jailed on various occasions since. In a statement posted on 13 October, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and an extreme hardliner on Cuba, wrote that Ferrer’s “leadership and tireless advocacy for the Cuban people was a threat to the [Cuban] regime. We are glad that Ferrer is now free from the regime’s oppression”. He also called for the “immediate release of the more than 700 unjustly detained political prisoners” in Cuba.
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