Washington D.C. – Cafe Fuerte, Apr. 03, 2026
The Cuban-American professor Alina López Miyares, convicted of espionage in Cuba in 2017, is the highest-profile political case among the prisoners who should be released following the mass pardon announced by the Cuban regime.
López Miyares was sentenced to 13 years in prison on espionage charges in 2017 and has been on parole since July 2022, but is barred from leaving Cuba and reuniting with her family in the United States. She remains under a form of supervision at a government facility in Havana and has faced serious health problems for several years.
Her situation is perhaps the least publicized when calling for the release of political prisoners from the Cuban regime, but, as was the case with U.S. citizen Alan Gross between 2009–2014, it is a highly sensitive matter for relations between Washington and Havana and has been part of recent negotiations between the two countries, with Vatican involvement, according to several sources connected to the process.
However, calls for her release have not received support from South Florida members of Congress, something that has been strongly criticized in recent years by attorney Jason I. Poblete, president of the organization The Global Liberty Alliance and López Miyares’s legal representative in the United States.
The State Department mentioned this week that “the Donald Trump administration has raised López’s case with regime authorities and has advocated for her release on humanitarian grounds,” according to an official who declined to provide details to Café Fuerte on the matter.
“She is desperately counting the days until her return,” said her son, Michael Peralta.
López Miyares, 67, is expected to be included on the list of 2,010 prisoners pardoned by the Cuban government and who are set to begin being released in the coming hours. Her departure from Cuba would be a clear sign that ongoing talks between the two countries are beginning to yield concrete results.
