The Cuban government on Thursday denied American accusations that it had deliberately released criminals from prison so that they might join the thousands of Cubans who have fled the island for the United States since last month.
Cuban officials did not question that furloughed prisoners might have joined the refugees who have seized on a new permissiveness by the Cuban government.But the officials said that if such criminals had turned up among those who reached Florida by raft or been taken to Guantanamo Bay naval base over the last month, it was not their doing.
The chief spokesman for Cuba's Foreign Ministry, Miguel Alfonso, said in an interview that since the Mariel boat lift in 1980, when more than 2,000 criminals were among the 125,000 Cubans who left the country, there has been "speculation all the time that we are cleaning out our jails to dump them on you."
On Wednesday, Clinton administration officials said that they had evidence that Cuba had released several dozen prisoners and at least encouraged them to go. After a visit to the refugee encampment at Guantanamo, Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., said that about 100 refugees had been segregated from the others on the suspicion that they had been "unloaded on the United States."
A diplomat here said that American officials in Cuba had seen the furlough pass of one man imprisoned for profiteering who said he had been released specifically so that he might leave the country. But the diplomat said officials of the U.S. mission here had not found any other cases among the people preparing to flee.
Cuban officials said that short leaves were not unusual for prisoners but denied that convicts had been released so they could leave the island.
Under the terms of an immigration agreement signed in 1984, Cuba has taken back only about 1,000 of more than 2,000 former criminals who were intentionally released during the Mariel boat lift.