"Freed" dissident still jailed

Back in February when four dissidents were sent to forced exile in Spain, rumors ran rampant that the next to be released would be Dr. José Luis García Paneque.

García Paneque, a plastic surgeon from Las Tunas, was director of the independent news agency Libertad and a member of the Journalists' Society, both unofficial groups. García, sentenced to 24 years in the crackdown on dissidence five years ago, also was a Varela Project activist and directed a private library, according to Amnesty International.

Word on the street three months ago had him all but free. But now reports from Cuba say most recent visits to him in the Las Mangas prison confirm that he remains behind bars, and in bad shape.

A report from the Coalition of Cuban Women says Garcia's mom, Moralinda Paneque, returned home from a May 5 visit to her son "distressed."

"I anticipated an improvement in his health, but that wasn’t at all what I witnessed," she was quoted saying in a press release. "My son resembles a skeleton…He barely has any fat under his skin…He has stick-like thighs; his backbone protrudes as he bends over…He is emaciated to the point that his stomach is almost touching his backbone…His skin color is very strange to me…I would describe it as grayish blue."

According to the report, the 42-year old Cuban prisoner of conscience who weighs a little over 100 pounds told his family that he continues bleeding daily through the rectum, a complication related to the malabsorption syndrome he suffers from, an illness that he developed in prison and which does not allow the food he ingests to nourish his body.

His wife and four kids left Cuba in March and sought political asylum

- Frances Robles