Despotic Cuba yields a little

Raul Castro, seeking a better economic deal with the European Union, has promised to release 10 more political prisoners, including the justly celebrated Afro-Cuban medical doctor Oscar Elias Biscet, who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President George Bush in 2007. In absentia, of course. Dr. Biscet was serving a 25-year sentence for political activity at the time.

The question is whether the Cuban government is truly turning over a new leaf or simply trying to curry favor in Europe. The release of Dr. Biscet may be the test case.

The Cuban government this week also gave permission for the family of deceased political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo to emigrate to the United States. Mr. Zapata died in prison last year on a hunger strike to protest his mistreatment.

In recent months Mr. Castro has released 80 political prisoners amid indications that he believes such measures will satisfy conditions set down by the European Union in 1996 requiring Cuban respect for human rights and freedom of expression before normal relations could be established.

Many European nations maintain embassies in Cuba and pursue their own interests without regard to the EU common position. But a decision by the EU to negotiate aid and trade agreements with Cuba requires a unanimous decision, and in recent years Britain has held out for stronger evidence of Cuban compliance with EU conditions.

The latest releases, negotiated by the Catholic Church's representative in Cuba, Archbishop Jaime Ortega, still leave three prominent political prisoners in captivity, Librado Linares, Jose Daniel Ferrer and Felix Avarro, the Miami Herald reports. Along with Dr. Biscet, the three were among the Group of 75 dissidents arrested by the Cuban government in 2003 and accused to being in the pay of the United States.

Most of the freed prisoners have been exiled from Cuba. But Dr. Biscet, who has been nominated twice for the Nobel Peace Prize, has announced his intention to remain in Cuba to fight for political rights. That sets up a confrontation with Mr. Castro over the extent to which he is ready to allow anti-government, pro-democracy political activity. That confrontation could become an acid test on Cuba's new policies and how they are interpreted in Europe.

Could it also become the spark for an Egyptian-style public uprising? Revolution, after all, is very much in the air in 2011.