Jailed Cuban dissident Jose Daniel Ferrer, the longtime leader of the island's pro-democracy movement, announced Friday that he had chosen to go into exile after suffering "torture" and "humiliation" in prison.

"Faced with the constant pressure from the political police to leave Cuba, I have ended up accepting exile," the 55-year-old wrote in a letter from prison dated September 10, which his wife Nelva Ismaray Ortega read to AFP by phone.

The letter didn't say where he expected to go or when but it praised US policy on Cuba.

Ferrer said that since he was returned to prison in April after being briefly freed under a deal with former US president Joe Biden, "the cruelty of the dictatorship towards me has known no bounds."

In the letter, he cited "blows, torture, humiliation, threats and

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