Cuban inmates fighting deportation freed one of 10 hostages - a woman in need of medical treatment - in exchange for a meeting with a newspaper reporter, authorities said.
Reporter Cynthia Corzo of the Spanish-language edition of The Miami Herald, El Nuevo Herald, said prison secretary Kitty Suddeth, 24, was released Wednesday night from the maximum-security cell-block seized eight days ago."She looked a bit shaken," Corzo said. "She was crying, but she kept saying, `I'm all right. I'm all right.' "
After the release, Corzo and photographer Carlos Guerrero met with the inmates through a grille outside the cellblock. Guerrero said they met with groups of up to 12 prisoners while more than 150 officers in riot gear stood by.
Suddeth was among 10 prison workers taken hostage during the takeover Aug. 21 at the Talladega Federal Correctional Institution.
Federal prison officials said in a statement that she required medical treatment. Warden Roger F. Scott would not elaborate.
At a news conference, Corzo said the inmates demanded that all deportations of Cubans be halted.
"More than one did say they want a peaceful resolution as soon as possible," she told Miami TV station WPLG. "They did not make any threats to the hostages, and they indicated that all the hostages were fine."
The besieged cellblock houses 121 Cubans facing deportation for crimes committed in the United States. The prisoners are among thousands of Cubans who arrived in this country during the 1980 Mariel boatlift, and some have said they would rather die than return to their homeland.
Corzo has written about Cuban inmates for El Nuevo Herald. Her name and the names of two other reporters were on a sign posted by the inmates on the unit's roof Wednesday morning.
Corzo spoke with the inmates by bullhorn from outside the cellblock and told them she could tell readers their story if they would release "all hostages and detainees requiring treatment," Scott said.