Sawt Falasteen - Cuban opposition leader Ferrer announces exile after prison 'torture'

"Faced with the constant pressure from the political police to leave Cuba, I have ended up accepting exile," the 55-year-old wrote in a letter from prison dated September 10, which his wife Nelva Ismaray Ortega read to AFP by phone.

The letter didn't say where he expected to go.

Ferrer said that since he was returned to prison in April after being briefly freed under a deal with former US president Joe Biden, "the cruelty of the dictatorship towards me has known no bounds."

In the letter, he cited "blows, torture, humiliation, threats and extreme conditions" in prison, including "the theft of food and hygiene products ordered by the regime's minions."

He said he took the decision to leave faced with threats that his wife would also be imprisoned and his young son sent to an institution for juvenile offenders.

"I leave Cuba with my dignity and honor intact, and not for long," he declared, setting a deadline of October 6 for his release.

His departure, expected in a matter of days, deals a blow to opposition on the communist-run island, which is in the throes of its worst economic crisis in decades and a mass exodus of its youth, mostly to the United States.

The founder of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), one of the most active opposition organizations in the one-party state, previously resisted pressure to go into exile to avoid prison.

He was the most high-profile of the political prisoners released in January as part of a landmark deal struck with Biden in return for Washington removing Cuba from a list of terrorism sponsors.

But he was returned to prison in April after current President Donald Trump put Cuba back on the list.

- Praise for US -

He has been in and out of prison since March 2003, when he and 74 other opposition members were arrested in a three-day period of repression known as the "Black Spring."

He was released in 2011 but sent back to prison in 2021 following a crackdown on mass anti-government protests that rattled the communist authorities.

After Havana's deal struck with Biden fell apart, Ferrer was sent back to prison to serve the remainder of a four-and-a-half year sentence.

During his brief spell of freedom he had defied the authorities by criticizing Cuba's leadership on social media soup kitchen at his home funded by exiled Cubans.

In his letter he said "only the United States... truly stands in solidarity with the peaceful opposition and the Cuban people" -- seen as a rebuke towards the European Union, which maintained a political and cooperation agreement in Cuba.

N.Shalabi--SF-PST