REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, HAVANA -- Cuba's most prominent dissidents said they had been kept in the dark by US officials over a list of 53 political prisoners who would be released from jail as part of a deal to end decades of hostility between the United States and Cuba.
For years, dissident leaders have told the United States which opponents of Cuba's communist government were being jailed or harassed, but they say they were not consulted when the list of prisoners to be freed was drawn up or even told who is on it.
The lack of information has stoked concern and frustration among the dissidents, who worry that the secret list is flawed and that genuine political prisoners who should be on it will be left to languish.
"We're concerned because we don't agree with the silence, because we have a right to know who they are. Who are they?" said Berta Soler, leader of the Ladies in White dissident group, which marches in Havana on Sundays to demand the release of prisoners.
"There are not just 53 political prisoners, there are more, and we are concerned that the US list might have common criminals on it," she told Reuters in Havana.
US officials have so far been tight-lipped about how the list of 53 was assembled and who was consulted inside Cuba. It also is not clear if some prisoners were kept off the list because the Cuban government refused to release them.
A US official said on Saturday that Washington had asked Cuba to release a specific group of people jailed on charges related to their political activities, but declined to answer further questions.
Neither the US nor the Cuban governments have said when the prisoners would be released. Cuba declined to comment on why more details have not been publicly released.
The dissident Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, which keeps track of activists in the different opposition groups, counted in June a total of 114 political prisoners, although it includes 12 who are on parole after being released from jail plus several others who have since been released.
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