Cuba said on Thursday that it was pardoning more than 2,000 prisoners, one of the largest such releases in years and the second in less than a month.
The Cuban Embassy in Washington said in a statement that the latest pardons were a “humanitarian and sovereign gesture” designed to coincide with Holy Week, an important religious holiday in the largely Catholic country.
In March, Cuba pledged to release 51 political prisoners after talks with the Vatican, which had been trying to broker talks between Cuba and the United States. The release of political prisoners in Cuba has been a priority for Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Cuba’s move last month appeared to be an effort to appease the Trump administration, which had been trying to choke the Cuban government through a monthslong oil blockade around the island that caused severe fuel shortages and electricity outages. The U.S. later allowed a Russian oil tanker to reach the island, reducing pressure on a Cuban government facing a looming economic collapse.
It was not clear late Thursday whether the new pardons were part of ongoing negotiations between the United States and Cuba. Mr. Rubio’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Cuban Embassy said the 2,010 prisoners it was releasing included young people, women and people over 60, as well as foreign nationals and Cuban citizens who live abroad. The embassy said the release would not include prisoners convicted of murder, drug offenses, sexual assault or “crimes against authority,” a catchall term that is generally applied to political dissidents.
The embassy did not name any of the prisoners. Knowing their identities, and whether they are political dissidents, will be an important barometer for Cuban-U.S. negotiations, said Michael Bustamante, the chairman of Cuban and Cuban American studies at the University of Miami.
Salomé Garcia, the founder of Justicia 11J, a Cuban rights advocacy group based in Miami, said that she did not expect many political prisoners to be among those released. Prisoners Defenders, a human rights group based in Spain, recently estimated that there are more than 1,200 such prisoners in Cuba.
At least one American dual citizen, Alina López Miyares of Miami, has been imprisoned in Cuba for nine years on a 13-year sentence on charges of espionage. She and her family have maintained that she is innocent.
Cuba has released thousands of prisoners since it began granting pardons in 2011, including more than 3,500 who were released during Pope Francis’s visit to the island in 2015.
So far, it has released 23 of the 51 prisoners whose pardons were announced in March, according to Cubalex, an exiled rights group based in Washington.
Alina Bárbara López, a historian and opposition activist in Matanzas, Cuba, said in an interview that the government has previously released large numbers of prisoners only to arrest them again when protests restart.
Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.
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