**Cuba’s leader Raul Castro “laments” the death of a detained activist who had been on hunger strike for nearly three months, its foreign ministry says.**It marks a rare expression of sorrow by the country’s leadership, often rebuked over its human rights record.
Orlando Zapata Tamayo died in hospital in Havana on Tuesday, 85 days after he began refusing food, sparking criticism of Havana from the US and EU countries.
The 42-year-old was arrested in 2003 in an crackdown on opposition activists.
But the Cuban president said neither Mr Tamayo nor anyone else on the island had been tortured.
Mr Zapata, who was declared a “prisoner of conscience” by Amnesty International, had been refusing food in protest at jail conditions and died in the capital’s Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital.
Release call
The international community has expressed deep regret at his death.
US state department spokesman Philip Crowley said Mr Zapata’s death “highlights the injustice of Cuba’s holding more than 200 political prisoners who should now be released without delay”.
The EU Commission offered its condolences to his family and said the issue of Cuba’s political prisoners would remain a “key priority for the EU”.
Mr Zapata’s death marks the first time in nearly 40 years that a Cuban activist has starved himself to death in protest at government abuses.
The last political prisoner to die on hunger strike in Cuba was Pedro Luis Boitel, a poet and student leader, in 1972.
Mr Zapata’s mother, Reina Luisa Tamayo, has said she believes her son to have been “murdered” by Cuba’s authorities.
“They managed to do what they wanted,” she told the Miami newspaper El Nuevo Herald. "They ended the life of a fighter for human rights.‘’
Mr Zapata was among a group of some 75 dissidents jailed by the authorities in 2003.
He was initially sentenced to three years in prison, but this was increased to 25 years in subsequent trials after he was charged with disobedience and disorder in a penal establishment, Amnesty says.
Cuba says prisoners of conscience are mercenaries sympathetic to the United States.