Nelson Acosta and Sarah Marsh, Reuters

HAVANA (Reuters) - The Cuban environmentalist activist Ariel Ruiz Urquiola who was on a hunger strike to protest his sentencing to a year in jail for contempt of authorities said on Tuesday that he had been freed on parole after an unusually broad campaign for his release.

“Without the support, the pressure made, without the international help, my liberation would not have been possible,” Ruiz Urquiola said by telephone after being released from hospital. “They gave me an ‘extrapenal license’ for health reasons.”