Previous | Next :: Seafront : Havana : Cuba | December 21, 2008, 2:49 am

Raul Castro has offered to release some Cuban political prisoners in exchange for the release of Cuban agents held in US jails. The Cuban agents have been convicted of spying and plotting assassinations in the US. This offer has been directed at President elect Obama.

Clearly this is not a decent offer. The people held in the Cuban jails are just brave honorable people campaigning for ordinary freedoms that are standard in decent societies. The writers, journalists and democrats incarcerated in Cuban jails absolutely deserve to be free. The fact that they are in jail is just totally obscene. They utterly completely deserve to be free already...........they have committed no crime!

They deserve freedom so much that maybe Obama should take up the sordid offer. Even though It really is sordid to equate those who use the freedoms available in the US to plot the murder of others ...... with the actions of people campaigning for open democracy and the right to free speech. There can be no moral equivalence.

I have sometimes been amazed and impressed that Israel will release hundreds of prisoners to get back even the body of one Israeli solider. In my view making concessions to drag your enemy do what decency demands with no price makes the actions of your enemy look even more obscene. Maybe Obama should act in the same way. The freedom of even a single democrat or a single writer is worth the cost of releasing these disgusting murder plotters.

The newly elected Obama should and will tower above the sordid Castro brothers and their 50 years of clutching to power through their vile police state. In my view Obama should take this obscene offer just to win the freedom of people who should so clearly be free already and have never even been arrested in the first place......... and what's more....... Obama in my view should drop all restrictions on trade and movement. It's only the Castro's that have benefitted from Cuba's isolation it has allowed them to get on with oppressing the people of Cuba in private.

Cheers Jez XXXXX

Who is Raul

Prisoner swap proposed