The Cuban Council of State will pardon more than 3,500 prisoners ahead of Pope Francis' visit to the island nation, according to Cuba's state run news agency, Granma.<\/p>\n
The Cuban government pardoned 200 prisoners ahead of Pope John Paul II's 1998 trip. Another 400 were pardoned when Pope Benedict XVI came in 2012.<\/p>\n
Many of those being released are over 60-years-old, under 20-years-old, chronically ill, women, and those set for parole in 2016. Some foreigners may also be freed.<\/p>\n
With a few exceptions for humanitarian reasons, most of the prisoners granted pardons did not commit crimes such as robbery, slaughter of cattle, or murder.<\/p>\n
The decision will take effect within three days, and the government will work with other governments to coordinate the release of foreign prisoners.<\/p>\n
It is likely that other concessions will come from Pope Francis' visit to Cuba. ;<\/p>\n
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September 11, 2015. The island has freed significantly more prisoners than it did for previous papal visits. ;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":32862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"acf":{"video":"http:\/\/youtu.be\/TG5_KWo0esk","video_descarga":"http:\/\/attuale.romereports.com\/news\/","international_url":"http:\/\/romereports.com.edgesuite.net\/news\/bcubapardonsint.mov","type":"rrp","newsletter":"si"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54395"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.romereports.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}