Freed Cuban dissident: The Church and Biden were duped

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 been locked up.

Mr. Ferrer, 54, who was jailed in 2021 after trying to take part in 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 give Cuba access to international financing and could help its battered tourism industry.

The Cuban government in return agreed to release 553 prisoners, many of whom participated in the massive street demonstrations in the summer of 2021 that brought Mr. Ferrer behind bars.

As prisoners begin to trickle out of prison with the terms of their release, some human rights campaigners are denouncing the deal as ill-considered and lopsided.

“The Biden administration made a fool of itself,” said Mr. Ferrer 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 imprisoned, and then in exchange they want concessions from the church and the American government. They are applauded and the world sees that they are so generous.”

While he is happy to be at home with his wife and 5-year-old son, who barely knows him, Mr. Ferrer that 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 a shady, unethical, undignified deal,” he said. “I said verbatim: I prefer death to being released because of an unworthy agreement.”
The Cuban government made a mockery of both Biden and the Vatican, which should take a firmer stance against human rights abuses, 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, with relaying messages.

Cardinal O’Malley said that Mr. Ferrer was a bit unfair in his criticism because the church wants to improve conditions in Cuba and a better relationship with the US is essential, alluding to the dire shortages on the island that many attribute to harsh US economic sanctions.

Although he agreed that protesters convicted of rioting 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 that 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 speaking to the foreign ministers and presidents of both countries.

“The Holy Father urged them to release the prisoners and also try to establish better relations with the United States,” Cardinal 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 diplomatic mission of the Holy See in Havana.

Mr. Castro, he said, spoke fondly of his time at Belen Jesuit Preparatory School in Havana.

The cardinal later paid another 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 as a jubilee year for the church, a special period of indulgence when millions of pilgrims are expected to visit Rome. The message to the Cuban government was simple: “The Jubilee is a time for the liberation of prisoners,” said Cardinal O’Malley.

At first, he said, Cuban government officials appeared to have been “startled” by the outpouring of discontent at the 2021 protest, especially 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 United States would tolerate this kind of subversive activity emanating from the states,” he said. “I tried to say: Whatever the origin of the demonstration and whoever was to blame, the Holy Father saw this as a humanitarian crisis and wanted to ask for mercy 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 consistently refused to take any action on Cuba’s inclusion on the state sponsors of terrorism list while so many protesters were still behind bars, the cardinal added.

The fact that President-elect Trump was returning to the White House undoubtedly played a role in the Cubans’ decision-making, the cardinal said.

“The door closed on an opportunity,” he said. “I’m not sure what President Trump will ultimately do, but judging from his first term in office, for the Cubans, I think it 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 that it preferred that the released prisoners be forced into exile, but the US government asked that they stay home if that was their preference, he said.

Several previous 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 returning to the Cuban government again and again until he felt like the widow in Luke’s parable of the persistent widow who returns repeatedly to a stubborn judge seeking justice until he finally gives up.

“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 has sought to convey the mass release as standard procedure in a nation of laws.

The vice president of Cuba’s Supreme Court, Maricela Sosa Ravelo, emphasized in an interview on Cuban state television that the prisoners were given “early release” equivalent to parole and were still under the criminal justice system.

“This is not amnesty or a pardon,” she said.

Mr. Ferrer, who previously served eight years in prison during a crackdown on the opposition in 2003, said he refused to sign a document outlining the conditions of his release, which included a monthly check-in with the court.

“I told them: Let’s not waste time, let me stay in jail so you don’t have to invent a farce of a court in the future,” he said.

He said he had spent almost three months in solitary confinement eating food he thought was poisoned because he had developed migraines and began hallucinating 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 accused of assault and kidnapping a man, an allegation he denied. He was sentenced to four years in prison, but was released to house arrest in 2020.

When he left his house on July 11, 2021 to join the massive protests sweeping the nation, he was quickly arrested and sent back to prison to serve his full sentence, with no credit for time served at home.

“I was fed the worst food anyone can imagine a human being eating,” said Mr. Ferrer.

Some prison quarters were infested with bedbugs, he said, and other prisoners, whose families could not afford to bring them food, appeared to be severely malnourished.

“I saw horrors there,” he said.

Mr. Ferrer hopes to rebuild a dissident movement shattered by imprisonment and forced exile.

“I am sure that this film will end with the liberation and democratization of Cuba and with a friendly Cuba allied with 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.”