The Biden administration has notified Congress that it will remove Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism in a deal the country’s communist government said would involve the “gradual” release of 553 political prisoners.
The deal, which administration officials said was negotiated through the Catholic church, was announced on Tuesday, just five days before Biden exits the White House and Donald Trump is inaugurated as the country’s 47th president.
“An assessment has been completed and we do not have information that supports Cuba’s designation as being a state sponsor of terrorism,” a senior administration official briefed reporters on Tuesday.
“The Catholic church is significantly advancing an agreement with Cuba to undertake a set of actions that will allow for the humanitarian release of a significant number of political prisoners in Cuba and those who have been detained unjustly,” the official said.
Cuba’s foreign ministry praised the US move. “Despite its limited scope, this is a decision that points to the right direction and is in line with the sustained and firm demand by the government and the people of Cuba, as well as the broad, emphatic and reiterated call by numerous governments, particularly those of Latin America and the Caribbean,” it said in a statement. “The decision announced today by the United States, rectifies, in a very limited way, some aspects of a cruel and unjust policy.”
But the US’s economic blockade of the island continued, the foreign ministry added. “The economic warfare is still in place and persists in posing a major obstacle to the development and recovery of the Cuban economy, with a high human cost for the population; and continues to be an incentive for emigration.”
Trump designated the country as a state sponsor of terrorism in 2021 shortly before he left office for “repeatedly providing support for acts of international terrorism in granting safe harbor to terrorists”. Cuba had previously been removed from that list under Barack Obama. It first received the designation in 1982 during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
Trump’s decision enforced sanctions that “penalize persons and countries engaging in certain trade with Cuba, restricts US foreign assistance, bans defense exports and sales, and imposes certain controls on exports of dual use items”. The decision to repeal the status may help alleviate a significant humanitarian crisis on the island, which is less than 100 miles from the coast of Florida.
But Trump may still decide to redesignate the country as a state sponsor of terrorist after his inauguration on 20 January. Some Republican lawmakers criticised the decision and said they would work with Trump to reverse it.
Rick Scott, a conservative senator from Florida, called the decision “Joe Biden’s parting gift to dictators and terrorists around the world” and said it was “reckless and dangerous”.
“I’ll be working with President Trump on DAY ONE to hold the Communist Cuban regime accountable and free the Cuban people,” he said.
Sir George Hollingbery, the UK ambassador to Cuba, said: “While this is clearly welcome, I think we can expect the new Trump administration to look to reimpose the designation as fast as they can. But that will probably take some time and there’s not a total guarantee they’ll be able to do it.
“That said, I can’t honestly see any banks changing their business practices and I think they’ll still exclude Cuba,” Hollingbery added.
Colombia’s leftwing president, Gustavo Petro, celebrated Biden’s move, writing on social media that the outgoing US president had “always sought dialogue with Latin American diversity … Lifting blockades, even only partially, is a major step forward,” Petro added.
In recent years several Latin American leaders had publicly called on the Biden administration to remove Cuba’s terrorism designation, with Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, last year telling the UN general assembly he believed it was “unjustified”.
Chile’s progressive president, Gabriel Boric, had also petitioned Biden to change US policy and abandon sanctions against Cuba because, he argued, they affected Cuban people, not the Cuban government. During a 2023 visit to the US Boric told reporters: “It is vitally important that the sanctions against Cuba are lifted and that Cuba is taken off the list of state sponsors of terror. We are convinced that it isn’t one.”
