GOVERNMENT FREES DISSIDENT AFTER U.S. CALLS FOR RELEASE

A Cuban dissident group said Tuesday the island’s government has released Tomas Nunez Magdariaga, who had carried out a lengthy hunger strike to protest his imprisonment.

The U.S. government had publicly called for his release on Oct. 4, citing “grave concerns” over his health.

A leader of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, Ovidio Martin Castellanos, told The Associated Press that Nunez Magdariaga, pictured, was driven to his home in eastern Cuba on Monday night.

The group says the dissident had been fasting for 62 days in prison, an assertion that could not be independently confirmed. He had been jailed since August on charges of making threats.

Group members have given Nunez Magdariaga’s age as 62 and 66.

The U.S. was launching a campaign at the United Nations on Tuesday calling for the release of Cuban political prisoners. Cuba says the Trump administration “agenda of supremacist, racist and xenophobic ideas” disqualify it from demanding human rights reforms from other countries.

Cuba says the island’s dissident groups are paid agents of the United States government and exile groups working to bring down the Communist government, which prosecutes them with measures akin to those of any state battling foreign agents.