MIAMI, Oct 14, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - Cuban dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer vowed Monday to keep fighting for democracy in his country after he was freed from prison and began his exile in the United States.

After he landed in Miami on a flight from the communist-run island nation, Washington demanded that Cuba release more than 700 other political prisoners.

"I will keep up the fight, but I will not continue it alone. I have to work with the entire exile community," Ferrer, the leader of the Cuban opposition, told a press conference in Miami's Little Havana, a Cuban flag draped around his shoulders.

Ferrer arrived in South Florida after being freed from a Cuban prison earlier on Monday.

"I'm very happy and content to be with a good part of my family," he said, and with "my comrades in the struggle, and many friends."

"But, on the other hand, it's a very hard, difficult, and sad time because there are other brothers and sisters in Cuba suffering in terrible conditions in the worst prisons in the Western Hemisphere."

His departure deals a blow to the opposition movement in Cuba. The country is facing its worst economic crisis in decades and an exodus of young people, mainly to the United States.

- Torture -

Secretary of State Marco Rubio welcomed the top Cuban dissident's arrival in the US.

"Ferrer's leadership and tireless advocacy for the Cuban people was a threat to the regime, which repeatedly imprisoned and tortured him. We are glad that Ferrer is now free from the regime's oppression," Rubio said in a statement.

"We call for the immediate release of the more than 700 unjustly detained political prisoners and urge the international community to join us in holding the Cuban regime accountable," added America's top diplomat, a Miami native and son of Cuban exiles.

Ferrer, who has been imprisoned multiple times as the long-term leader of the island's pro-democracy movement, said earlier this month that he had opted for exile after enduring torture and humiliation behind bars.

In a letter from prison, the 55-year-old said that since he was reimprisoned in April, "the cruelty of the dictatorship towards me has known no bounds."

He cited "blows, torture, humiliation, threats and extreme conditions" in prison, including "the theft of food and hygiene products."

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

The foreign ministry in Havana said in a statement that Ferrer and members of his family had left the country for the US following "a formal request from that country's government and the express acceptance" of the dissident.

His sister Ana Belkis Ferrer told AFP by telephone the opposition leader had "finally been exiled, thank God," adding his family was "very happy despite the tension of the last days."

- 'Dignity and honor' -

Ferrer said in his letter he would leave Cuba "with my dignity and honor intact, and not for long."

As founder of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU) -- one of the most active opposition organizations in the one-party state -- Ferrer had for years resisted pressure to go into exile to avoid prison.

He was the most high-profile of a group of prisoners released in January under a landmark deal struck with Biden in exchange for Washington removing Cuba from a list of terrorism sponsors.

But he was sent back to prison in April after Biden's successor, Donald Trump, slapped Cuba back on the list.

Ferrer 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 Cuba's "Black Spring."

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