One of Cuba’s most prominent dissidents, José Daniel Ferrer, who has challenged his country’s Communist regime for years, was released from prison on Monday and immediately left the island for exile in the United States with his family.
The Cuban foreign ministry said Mr. Ferrer had been freed because of a formal request from the U.S. government following a letter made public this month in which Mr. Ferrer said he wanted to leave the country because of harsh prison conditions and threats against his family.
“The dictatorship’s cruelty against me has surpassed all limits,” he wrote last month. “I have suffered beatings, torture, humiliation, threats and extreme conditions.”
Mr. Ferrer’s departure represents a blow to Cuba’s opposition at a time when the country is enduring its worst economic crisis in decades and many younger Cubans are abandoning the country. But his arrival in Miami was welcomed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is the son of Cuban exile parents.
Mr. Ferrer’s “leadership and tireless advocacy for the Cuban people was a threat to the regime, which repeatedly imprisoned and tortured him,’’ Mr. Rubio said in a statement. “We are glad that Ferrer is now free from the regime’s oppression.’’
Mr. Ferrer, 55, has been at the forefront of the Cuban opposition movement for two decades.
While most opposition leaders were based in Havana, the capital, Mr. Ferrer’s movement was centered in Santiago de Cuba, the country’s second- largest city, in the eastern part of the country. He was arrested during a protest there that was part of island-wide demonstrations in July 2021 that rattled the government and were brutally put down.
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The post Cuban Dissident Leader Leaves Prison for Exile in the U.S. appeared first on New York Times.
