Cuba has conditionally freed one of 75 opponents of President Fidel Castro, imprisoned last year for long terms, due to the grave state of his health.
Human rights activist and independent librarian, Mr Julio Antonio Valdes, who was serving a 20-year-sentence, said he was released Wednesday night because he needed a kidney transplant.
Valdes was released only hours before the United Nations' top human rights body voted narrowly to rebuke Cuba over its rights record and urge the country to accept a visit from a special UN investigator.
"The Cuban government wanted to make a humanitarian gesture with my release," Mr Valdes said.
The imprisonment of the 75 dissidents, for average 19-year-terms, provoked an international outcry and calls for their release from numerous governments, Pope John Paul, and other international personalities. Mr
Valdes is the first of the group to be freed.
Valdes said he was free to remain at home or in a hospital "until I am completely recovered." He planned to go to a Havana hospital today as a first step toward receiving a kidney transplant.
He was transferred in February from prison to a hospital.
He is thought to be in worse condition than a handful of the other 75 dissidents transferred to hospitals since being sentenced in April 2003 for "conspiring with the United States".