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US Demands Cuba Free High-Profile Prisoners in Two-Week Ultimatum Amid Crisis

US Demands Cuba Free High-Profile Prisoners in Two-Week Ultimatum Amid Crisis
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The United States gave Cuba a two-week deadline to free several high-profile political prisoners during a secret State Department visit to Havana on April 10, a sharp escalation in Washington’s pressure campaign on the island’s communist government aol +1. The ultimatum came as Cuba, mired in blackouts and fuel shortages, began releasing 2,010 inmates in its largest amnesty in a decade usatoday.

U.S. officials privately signaled that the release of prominent dissidents such as artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara and rapper Maykel “Osorbo” Castillo, both jailed since 2021–22, would be taken as a “good-faith” step and could unlock broader economic and political concessions long sought by Havana aol +1. Cuban leaders, however, publicly rejected the idea that any foreign power could dictate internal decisions, even as they acknowledged unprecedented talks with Washington.

A Secret Ultimatum Amid Economic Free Fall

The April 10 talks marked the first time a U.S. government plane had landed in Cuba since Barack Obama’s 2016 visit, underscoring the stakes of the back-channel diplomacy usatoday. According to multiple accounts, senior State Department officials warned Cuban counterparts — including a grandson of former leader Raúl Castro — that the island’s economy was in “free fall” and that Havana had only a narrow window to enact reforms before its crisis became irreversible usatoday.

As part of a proposed package, U.S. envoys floated measures that could eventually ease the embargo, create mechanisms to settle outstanding property claims and, more immediately, expand internet access via SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network — but only if Cuba moved on political prisoners and opened space for opposition voices usatoday. President Donald Trump reinforced the message days later, telling supporters that a “new dawn for Cuba” was coming and urging the regime to “make a deal” while it still could aol +1.

Havana Balances Sovereignty Claims and Prisoner Releases

Cuba has responded on two tracks: high-profile defiance in public, and carefully calibrated prisoner gestures in private. On April 3, just a week before the secret visit, authorities announced pardons for 2,010 inmates, describing the move as a “humanitarian and sovereign gesture” tied to Holy Week and insisting it was unrelated to U.S. demands usatoday +1. A smaller, Vatican-brokered release of 51 prisoners had been unveiled in March, also framed as a goodwill act usatoday.

President Miguel Díaz‑Canel has repeatedly dismissed the notion that Cuba holds political prisoners and told NBC’s “Meet the Press” he would not step down despite U.S. calls for leadership change, declaring that “no one dictates what we do” and vowing to defend the revolution “if we need to die” usatoday. Human-rights organizations, including Amnesty International, say that Otero Alcántara and Castillo are “prisoners of conscience” jailed on politically motivated charges and warn that recent amnesties appear to exclude most protesters and dissidents arrested after mass demonstrations in 2021 usatoday +1.

The Bigger Picture

The two-week deadline has turned Cuba’s long-running standoff with Washington into a compressed test of leverage, with the fate of a handful of jailed artists and activists now entangled in broader questions of regime survival, sanctions relief and regional stability. If Havana frees the high-profile prisoners named by U.S. officials, it could signal a pragmatic turn toward limited liberalization under intense economic duress; a refusal would harden a confrontation that has already seen Cuba declare an “international emergency” over U.S. measures and brace for further isolation msn. Either way, what happens when the clock runs out will reverberate far beyond the prison cells at the heart of this dispute.

aol USA TODAY; usatoday Axios; usatoday Associated Press; usatoday Amnesty International; usatoday New York Times; usatoday Al Jazeera; usatoday AP News; usatoday NBC News; usatoday PEN America; msn Xinhua/China Daily.