Cuba has freed a Cuban-American convicted of people smuggling after an incident in 2006 in which another smuggler was shot to death by Cuban security forces and a third was sentenced to 26 years in prison.

Julio Rafael Mesa Farinas said he was taken Wednesday to the Havana airport directly from the same hospital prison wing where U.S. subcontractor Alan Gross is being held, and flew to Miami with the assistance of U.S. diplomats in Havana. He arrived in Florida on Wednesday.

Gross got into a shouting match with a State Security official after his 15-year prison sentence was upheld on appeal, accusing him of lying by promising “benefits like a reduction in sentence” if he cooperated with the legal process, Mesa said.

Mesa, a 51-year old former Hialeah truck driver recounted his tale in a lengthy telephone interview with El Nuevo Herald Friday.

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the incident in 2006, in which he and two other Cubans set out from Mexico’s Caribbean coast in a 40-foot fast boat to pick up 44 people waiting to escape from the southern coast of Pinar De; Rio Province.

Cuban authorities were tipped to the escape and were waiting for the boat. They opened fire without warning, he said, killing Geovel González Morera and wounding the third smuggler, Rosendo Salgado, who was sentenced to 26 years in prison.

Mesa said he was freed because of his ill health, apparently caused by the several hunger strikes he launched in prison to protest his conviction and prison conditions.

Former political prisoners Oscar Elias Biscet and Angel Moya confirmed to El Nuevo Herald Friday that they met Mesa in prison, and that he had been on several liquids-only hunger strikes.