• Submitted by: manso
• Politics and Government
• 09 / 27 / 2010

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EFE - September 26, 2010. MADRID " A total of 21 Cuban political prisoners taken in by Spain since July have contacted the U.S. Embassy to express their desire to live in that country, where they can be reunited with other relatives, spokesmen for the dissidents said on Sunday.

The same request was made by 120 relatives of these dissidents as well as other freed political prisoners who prefer to remain in Spain after having been left Cuba over the past two months.

To date, 36 former political prisoners, along with about 200 relatives, have traveled to Spain, including four who did so this past week.

The agreement between the Cuban government and the Archbishopric of Havana regarding the release of 52 political prisoners establishes that they will be sent to Spain without any impediments being placed on their travel later to other countries.

In fact, one of the dissidents traveled to Chile in early August with his family to take up residence there as a political refugee.

The ex-prisoners who have asked to move to the United States are claiming that they are doing so for family reasons, given that they all have relatives in that country, most of whom live in the state of Florida, which has a large Cuban exile population.

“It’s been six years since I’ve seen my son, who is in Miami. If it weren’t for him, I’d stay in Spain, ” said Blas Giraldo, one of the released prisoners.

Giraldo, like the other dissidents, was imprisoned in Cuba in 2003 after being accused, and found guilty, of conspiring with the United States against the Cuban Revolution.

Antonio Diaz, who has a 22-year-old son in the United States, also expressed his gratitude for being allowed to stay in Spain for the time being.

“I’ve felt very much at home and the living conditions have been the best, although we’re far away from our homeland,” Diaz, one of the ex-prisoners who opted to remain temporarily in Madrid, said.

Others, like Julio Cesar Galvez, are not as happy with the help given to them by the Spanish government while they are awaiting a response from the United States.

The U.S. Embassy in Spain and the legal offices of the U.S. State Department and Homeland Security Department in Washington are separately analyzing each of the requests to make sure that they are in accord with U.S. law.

No clues have been provided as to when the first requests will be resolved, but because there are a relatively large number of cases, “it will take some time” to complete the process, sources with the U.S. diplomatic delegation said.

The U.S. envoy to Spain, Alan Solomont, has expressed his “full readiness” to do “everything possible” so that those former prisoners and their relatives who want to do so may travel to the United States, according to spokesmen for the dissidents.

It also remains to be seen what will happen with the dozen or so political prisoners from the group of 52 who do not want to travel to Spain, whether that is because they want to remain in Cuba or travel directly to the United States.

Source: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/118093