One of Cuba's leading dissidents, Oscar Elias Biscet, was freed from prison on Friday and vowed to keep protesting against the government that had just released him.
One of Cuba's leading dissidents, Oscar Elias Biscet, was freed from prison on Friday and vowed to keep protesting against the government that had just released him.
Biscet, 49, was one of the last of 52 political prisoners President Raul Castro promised to release in an accord with Cuba's Catholic Church last July. Just three of them remain behind bars.
The 52 had been jailed since a 2003 government crackdown on opponents known as Cuba's "Black Spring" that strained the communist-led island's international relations.
"I'm happy because I'm with my family, my friends, my neighbours," Biscet told Reuters at his Havana home.
But he said: "I feel sad also because in reality I continue to be a prisoner on this island. I changed position, nothing more, from one depressing place to my home that makes me happy."
For Biscet's opposition to Cuba's government, President George W Bush awarded him in absentia the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.
"For now, the first plan is to be with the family, recuperate and tell the government that we are here to win the freedom of the people," he said.
"I don't think anything has changed," said Biscet, who wore a blue shirt and red tie.
"I think we are living difficult moments and that we need the help of the international community."
Castro agreed to free the 52 prisoners after the death of a dissident hunger striker in February 2010 brought international criticism of Cuba's human rights.
Since then, the prisoner release has widened so that about 100 government opponents in all have been freed, with most of them going to Spain, which agreed to take them in. Biscet will stay in Cuba.
Cuban authorities view dissidents as mercenaries working for their archenemy, the United States.
The prisoner release has coincided with Castro's launch of economic reforms to modernise Cuba's Soviet-style economy.
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