Church: Cuba offers to free 52 political prisoners
HAVANA (AP) — The Roman Catholic Church said Wednesday that Cuba has agreed to free 52 political prisoners and allow them to leave the country in what would be the island’s largest mass liberation of dissidents since Pope John Paul II visited in 1998.
Five would be released in a matter of hours and planned to head into exile in Spain, while the remaining 47 would be liberated in “a process that will take three or four months starting now,” according to the statement by the office of Havana’s Roman Catholic Archbishop, Cardinal Jaime Ortega.
The deal was announced following a meeting between President Raul Castro and Ortega. Also participating was visiting Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos and his Cuban counterpart, Bruno Rodriguez.
“We feel enormous satisfaction,” Moratinos said in a statement released by the Spanish Embassy. “This opens a new era in Cuba with hope of putting aside differences once and for all on matters of prisoners.”
The scope of the agreement “is a surprise,” said Elizardo Sanchez, head of the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation. “We were hoping for a significant release of prisoners, but not this.”
Ortega’s office said that those to be released were all members of a group of 75 leading political opposition activists, community organizers and journalists who report on Cuba in defiance of state controls on media. They were rounded up in a crackdown on dissent in March 2003.
“I’m so excited,” said Laura Pollan, whose husband, Hector Maceda, was one of the 75, and had been serving 20 years in prison for treason — but now could be headed home soon.
But Pollan was also hesitant, saying Cuba may not free as many political prisoners as it says it will.
“I don’t think they will let everyone go; I think only some will be,” she said in her shabby living room in central Havana. “It won’t be the first time that they lie.”
She later added, however, “I hope to God I’m wrong and can tell you in September that I was wrong and that the government kept its promise.”
Some of the 75 original prisoners had previously been freed for health reasons or after completing their terms, or were allowed into exile in Spain. But at least 52 have remained behind bars — most serving lengthy prison terms on charges of conspiring with Washington to destabilize Cuba’s political system.
Church official Orlando Marquez said that by the cardinal’s count, only 52 prisoners were left imprisoned from that group.
Sanchez originally said there were actually 53 of the 75 still behind bars and that one, a former police official named Rolando Jimenez, had been left off Wednesday’s list. But he later clarified that his group considers Jimenez a “prisoner of conscience” but not among the 75 arrested in 2003 — meaning all of the group captured seven years ago now stand to be freed in coming weeks.
Sanchez also said it was not clear which five inmates would be released immediately, adding that “the forced exile in Spain” that awaits them is not the same as unconditional freedom. Another unanswered question is whether those freed after the initial batch of five will be deported to Spain or allowed to stay on the island.
“These liberations will not mean a significant improvement in the terrible situation of human rights that exists in Cuba,” said Sanchez, whose Havana-based commission is not recognized — but largely tolerated — by Cuba’s government, which officially brooks no organized opposition.
“It’s opening the prisons a little, and not to everyone,” he said.
Still, if the agreement holds, it would be the largest group of political prisoners freed since the government released 299 inmates in a general amnesty following the pope’s visit 12 years ago. Of those, about 100 were considered held for political reasons.
Others cheered the news, including Sarah Stephens, head of the Washington-based Center for Democracy in the Americas, which supports lifting the United States’ 48-year-old trade embargo against the island.
“This is joyful news for the prisoners and their families, a credit to the Cuban Catholic Church,” Stephens said in a statement, “and a lesson for U.S. policy makers that engagement — talking to the Cubans with respect — is accomplishing more, right now, than the embargo has accomplished in 50 years.”
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Virginia Staab said “we would view prisoner releases as a positive development, but we are seeking further details to confirm the facts.”
Cuba’s Catholic Church has recently become a major political voice on the island, though only with the consent of the Castro government.
In May, Ortega negotiated an end to a ban on marches by a small group of wives and mothers of political prisoners known as the Ladies in White.
The cardinal and another church leader subsequently met with Castro for four hours. Church officials then announced the government would transfer political prisoners to jails closer to their families and give better access to medical care for inmates who need it. That led to 12 transfers last month, and freedom for paraplegic Ariel Sigler.
Those discussions apparently laid the groundwork for Wednesday’s large-scale agreement.
The church’s increasing role helped to defuse a human rights situation that has been tense since the Feb. 23 death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, an activist who died in prison after a lengthy hunger strike. He became the first Cuban opposition figure to die after refusing food in nearly 40 years.
His death sparked international condemnation, and Pollan said Wednesday she thought Cuba had been forced into this latest move because “no country was going to change its position toward Cuba if there weren’t improvement in the area of human rights.”
The announced agreement also appeared to cast some doubt on the future of Guilermo Farinas, an opposition activist and freelance journalist who has refused food and water since February to protest Zapata Tamayo’s death and demand freedom for dozens of political prisoners, all among the 75 jailed in 2003.
He said by phone Wednesday from a hospital in the central city of Santa Clara, where he has received nutrients intravenously, that he would continue his hunger strike and was prepared to go until he dies. Cuba’s state-controlled media has reported that Farinas recently suffered a potentially fatal blood clot in his neck.
Fidel Castro said Cuba held 15,000 political prisoners in 1964, but officials in recent years say none of their prisoners are held for political reasons — all for common crimes or for being paid “mercenaries” of U.S.-funded groups trying to overthrow Cuba’s government.
According to a report released this week by Sanchez’s commission, the number of Cuban political prisoners has fallen to 167, the lowest total since Fidel Castro took power on New Year’s Day 1959 — but that tally included those now set to be released as part of the agreement between the church and the government.
“There are more than 100 remaining prisoners and we don’t see any in this agreement,” Sanchez said. “The government of Cuba should free all political prisoners in Cuba.”
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More than 50 killed in attacks across Baghdad
 
BAGHDAD (AP) — Militants struck across the Iraqi capital Wednesday, killing more than 50 people, including 32 in a suicide bombing that targeted pilgrims commemorating a revered Shiite saint, Iraqi police said.
The attacks — the deadliest of which occurred in northern Baghdad’s predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah — offered a clear indication of the push by insurgents to exploit Iraq’s political vacuum and destabilize the country as U.S. troops head home.
Police said the bloody suicide bombing that killed 32 and wounded more than 90 people, split the hot Wednesday evening air as Shiite pilgrims were about to cross a bridge leading to the a shrine in the Shiite Kazimiyah neighborhood where a revered imam is buried.
A 30-year-old Sunni resident of Azamiyah said he was drinking tea and watching pilgrims walk by when he and his friends heard the blast.
“We heard a big explosion and everybody rushed to the site to see bodies and hear wounded people, screaming for help,” Saif al-Azami told The Associated Press.
“We helped carry the wounded to the hospital before the ambulances arrived,” he said, adding that some of his Sunni friends who were serving food and water to the Shiite pilgrims were killed and wounded in the attacks.
Militants were able to strike even as security forces were on high alert in the capital, where Shiite pilgrims from all over Iraq converged on a mosque in the northern Baghdad neighborhood to mark the anniversary of the death of Moussa al-Kadhim, the seventh imam.
A vehicle ban was in place across Kazimiyah, and 200,000 members of security forces were deployed along the way to the shrine, searching pilgrims for weapons at various checkpoints.
Though violence has dropped across Iraq, religious processions, holy sites and security forces are still regularly targeted by insurgents trying to re-ignite sectarian bloodshed that had the nation teetering on the brink of civil war from 2005 to 2007.
Wednesday’s attack took place near the bridge where 900 people died in 2005 in a stampede sparked by a rumor that a suicide bomber was among the more than 1 million people who had gathered at the Kazimiyah shrine to mark the date of the imam’s death.
Iraq has been without a new government since the March 7 election, which produced no clear winner. The bickering between opposing political blocs vying to lead the country has raised fears that insurgents are exploit the uncertainty to re-ignite sectarian bloodshed.
Earlier this week U.S. vice president Joe Biden met with senior Iraqi officials in Baghdad to urge them to select new leaders for Iraq wobbly democracy without further delays. Biden met with two main contestants for the prime minister post, Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite who currently heads the government, and his Sunni-backed rival Ayad Allawi, who narrowly won the March vote. Biden ask the two men to compromise.
Also on Wednesday, at least seven Shiite pilgrims were killed in two separate attacks in Harthiya neighborhood in western Baghdad. Twenty-nine people were wounded in the two attacks, police and hospital officials said.
In northern Baghdad, a roadside bomb targeting the devout Shiites detonated, killing two civilians and two policemen on patrol near by, police officials said.
Earlier Wednesday, police and hospital officials said two pilgrims died and seven were wounded in eastern Baghdad when a mortar shell hit their procession.
In western Baghdad, militants blew up the homes of Iraqi security officers, killing three family members.
Police officials said militants blew up the homes of two police officers, two members of an anti-al-Qaida Awakening Council and that of an ambulance driver in Wednesday’s dawn attacks in Baghdad’s western suburb of Abu Ghraib.
None of the targeted men were at home at the time of the attacks, but three of the men’s relatives were killed, police and hospital officials in Abu Ghraib said.
Also in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi soldier was killed and six were wounded when a suicide bomber drove an explosives-laden car into an army checkpoint. A bomb attached to a car of a police officer exploded in the same western Baghdad suburb, killing his mother and wounding his wife, police officials said.
In the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Dora in southern Baghdad, a police major was killed when a bomb attached to his car detonated as he drove to work on Wednesday morning, police said.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.
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Car hits bus carrying handicapped in NY; 1 dead
FLEMING, N.Y. (AP) — A bus carrying handicapped people has collided with a car in central New York and has overturned, killing a woman and injuring 15 other people.
The Cayuga (ky-YOO’-gah) County sheriff says a 73-year-old woman died and the 15 others were taken to hospitals following Wednesday afternoon’s collision.
Sheriff David Gould tells WSYR-TV in Syracuse the car crossed a center line and hit the bus on a highway in Fleming, 25 miles southwest of Syracuse.
The bus was carrying 15 people, including the driver and an aide. The passengers had various disabilities, and some used wheelchairs.
Gould says the woman who died was a passenger. He doesn’t know the conditions of the people taken to hospitals.
 
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Magnitude-5.4 quake strikes Southern California
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A moderate earthquake jolted Southern California on Wednesday, rattling buildings across a wide swath of land but causing no immediate injuries or major damage.
The magnitude-5.4 quake was centered 28 miles south of Palm Springs, or about 130 miles east of Los Angeles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It struck at 4:53 p.m.
It was initially reported as a magnitude-5.9 but later downgraded to 5.4. Sheriff’s departments in Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange and San Diego counties have no immediate reports of major damage or injuries.
Caltech Seismic Analyst Anthony Guarino said preliminary information indicates that the quake was on the San Jacinto fault, one of two that was stressed by the 7.2-magnitude quake near the U.S.-Mexico border on Easter.
He said structures in Palm Springs will likely see some damage, cracked masonry and plaster.
Tony Wann, 37, a bartender at Carlee’s Place in downtown Borrego Springs, said the quake knocked a few glasses off shelves but none shattered and there was no apparent damage, other than rattled nerves.
“You heard it before you felt it. It was a big rumbling, then a few seconds of violent shaking,” he said.
“Everybody came out of their shops, then everybody went right about their normal business,” Wann said. “It’s part of living in California.”
Kim Daniel, director of sales and marketing at the Borrego Springs Resort and Spa, said the earthquake was the strongest that she’s felt in 13 years of living in Southern California.
The temblor began with a strong shaking that lasted about 10 seconds, she said.
“I looked around to make sure nothing was falling off the walls, she said.
She said the resort appears to have suffered no structural damage. There were few guests because it’s the heart of the summer — the low tourist season in the desert.
At least a dozen aftershocks have been recorded, with the largest measuring magnitude-3.6. Guarino said such seismic activity is not completely surprising given the quake on Easter in Southern California.
“We knew that the stress increased on both of those faults. You can’t predict earthquakes, but the statistics said there would be an increased chance of this happening,” he said.
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Magnitude-5.4 quake strikes Southern California
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A moderate earthquake jolted Southern California on Wednesday, rattling buildings across a wide swath of land but causing no immediate injuries or major damage.
The magnitude-5.4 quake was centered 28 miles south of Palm Springs, or about 130 miles east of Los Angeles, the U.S. Geological Survey said. It struck at 4:53 p.m.
It was initially reported as a magnitude-5.9 but later downgraded to 5.4. Sheriff’s departments in Los Angeles, Riverside, Orange and San Diego counties have no immediate reports of major damage or injuries.
Caltech Seismic Analyst Anthony Guarino said preliminary information indicates that the quake was on the San Jacinto fault, one of two that was stressed by the 7.2-magnitude quake near the U.S.-Mexico border on Easter.
He said structures in Palm Springs will likely see some damage, cracked masonry and plaster.
Tony Wann, 37, a bartender at Carlee’s Place in downtown Borrego Springs, said the quake knocked a few glasses off shelves but none shattered and there was no apparent damage, other than rattled nerves.
“You heard it before you felt it. It was a big rumbling, then a few seconds of violent shaking,” he said.
“Everybody came out of their shops, then everybody went right about their normal business,” Wann said. “It’s part of living in California.”
Kim Daniel, director of sales and marketing at the Borrego Springs Resort and Spa, said the earthquake was the strongest that she’s felt in 13 years of living in Southern California.
The temblor began with a strong shaking that lasted about 10 seconds, she said.
“I looked around to make sure nothing was falling off the walls, she said.
She said the resort appears to have suffered no structural damage. There were few guests because it’s the heart of the summer — the low tourist season in the desert.
At least a dozen aftershocks have been recorded, with the largest measuring magnitude-3.6. Guarino said such seismic activity is not completely surprising given the quake on Easter in Southern California.
“We knew that the stress increased on both of those faults. You can’t predict earthquakes, but the statistics said there would be an increased chance of this happening,” he said.
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Coast Guard: 3 dead after copter crash off Wash.
SEATTLE (AP) — A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter crashed a few hundred yards off the coast of Washington state on Wednesday, killing three of four crew members on board.
Rear Adm. Gary Blore, commander of the 13th Coast Guard district, said the cause of the crash is not known but that there were downed power lines on the beach near the helicopter’s wreckage.
Witnesses told local media that the helicopter was flying at a low altitude when it approached La Push, Wash., a small outpost on the Quileute Nation reservation. It is about 100 miles west of Seattle, on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.
Blore said it’s not unusual for Coast Guard helicopters to fly low. He said the power lines had been about 250 feet above the water level and that those lines are marked in navigational charts.
Quileute tribal member Rio Jaime told the Peninsula Daily News that he saw the helicopter clip the power lines with its tail, sending it down to the water.
“It took us a little bit to realize that really happened,” he said. “It was like in the movies.”
News footage showed the orange color of the helicopter’s body with the wheels showing through the blue Pacific Ocean water. A rotor blade was also seen sticking out of the water.
The identities of the dead guardsmen were not immediately released Wednesday afternoon, pending family notification, Blore said. The lone survivor, who suffered nonlife-threatening injuries including a broken arm and leg, was also not identified.
Blore said the four-member crew of the MH-60 Jayhawk was flying from Astoria, Ore., to Sitka, Alaska, where they were based.
Around 9:30 a.m., the Coast Guard lost communication with the helicopter, prompting bases in Astoria and Port Angeles, Wash., to launch search helicopters.
Members of the Quileute Nation who heard the crash rushed out to the water.
Darryl Penn, the harbormaster for the Quileute Nation in La Push, said he and three others raced out to the wreckage on two small boats and were able to reach two of the crew members, who were “pretty banged up.” He found one in the water with a wet suit on and the other in the wreckage.
“You know, these guys are out here for us, for the guys who fish,” Penn said. “When they go down, it’s scary.”
Three members were recovered by tribal members, who performed CPR on at least one of them.
Blore said all four crew members were found outside of the helicopter.
The crash “particularly hits home and certainly as a naval aviator,” Blore said, his voice breaking. “We’re saddened.”
—-Contact The Daily Reveille’s news staff at [email protected].