HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Cuba has freed dissident union activist Jose
                 Gonzalez Bridon, jailed a year ago for "spreading false information" after
                 writing an article criticizing police, his wife said on Friday.

                 "They released him on a provisional basis yesterday and he is doing quite well," the
                 50-year-old dissident's wife, Maria Esther Valdes, told Reuters.

                 Gonzalez, head of a small opposition group called the Confederation of Democratic
                 Workers in Cuba, was arrested last December and sentenced to two years in May
                 for the crime of "spreading false information."

                 Gonzalez wrote an article in August 2000 blaming police negligence for the death of
                 an opposition activist who was attacked by her ex-husband. The offending article
                 was carried on the Internet by the U.S.-based Cuba Free Press agency, one of
                 several groups providing an outlet for dissident writers.

                 Supporters of Gonzalez charged at the time of his trial that Cuban authorities used
                 that article as a prete xt to punish him for a dossier of anti-government activities,
                 including a symbolic burying of the Cuban constitution and penal code in his
                 backyard.

                 He has also written frequent anti-government articles for dissemination abroad, by
                 dictation to Florida, with headlines like "Cuba, a Perfect Dictatorship."

                 President Fidel Castro's government, which considers all dissidents
                 "counter-revolutionaries" at the service of hostile U.S. policy, has not commented
                 on the case.

                 The government often states dissidents do not represent the Cuban people and exist
                 in a "virtual reality" for the diplomatic community and foreign journalists.

                 Cuba's small and fragmented dissident movement, which is barred from forming
                 legal opposition parties, poses little threat to Castro's grip on power.

                    Copyright 2001 Reuters.