Cuban police have told dissident Guillermo Fariñas they will punish a former officer who threatened to kill him, an unprecedented move that Fariñas said should embolden other dissidents attacked by security agents.

“This is a blow against impunity,” said Fariñas. “Peaceful opposition activists can now file lawsuits for injuries, for threats, for attempted murders, against those who pummel them constantly.”

Fariñas said National Revolutionary Police officials told him Monday he will be allowed to witness the session next week where the man who threatened him, former Interior Ministry Maj. Miguel Morejó Padrón, will be sanctioned.

Morejó will be hit with a restraining order to stay away from Fariñas, a warning that he will go to jail if he threatens the dissident again and a 300 peso fine, just high enough to trigger a criminal record, the dissident said.

Fariñas, winner of the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize in 2010 for his peaceful opposition activism, said it was the first known incident in which a government agent is punished for acting against dissidents.

Facing his many public complaints against Morejó, “the authorities didn’t want this grinding, demoralizing media show and decided to sacrifice one of its officers,” he told El Nuevo Herald by telephone.

Cuban dissidents regularly complain of beatings, harassments and threats at the hands of security forces and government-organized mobs when they attempt to stage public protests. Some have been rushed to hospitals for treatment of injuries.

Fariñas said the death threat came on Nov. 2, when he went to the Arnaldo Milian Castro Hospital in his hometown of Santa Clara to visit dissidents Alcides Rivera and Roland Ferrer, who had been admitted amid lengthy hunger strikes.

Morejó, who had left the Interior Ministry with the rank of major and was second in command of the hospital’s security, intercepted him, hit him and threatened to kill him, he added. Morejó’s job in the ministry, in charge of domestic security, and the reasons for his departure were not known.

Fariñas was detained and when he was released on the 4th he went to the National Revolutionary Police to file a complaint. Morejó was summoned and boasted “that he threatened to kill me, and that he would kill me if he had to,” the dissident added.

The police initially told him they would do nothing, but he returned to the police station three times and stood in front of the building in protest. He was arrested each time, and released hours or days later.

Fariñas said police told him a “multidisciplinary” team had examined the case and decided on the warning and fine because Morejó had no previous criminal record.

Cuban authorities regularly deny allegations of abuses by the island’s security forces and boast that its National Revolutionary Police and State Security agents at the Interior Ministry are superbly trained.

There have been reports that some security agents were privately disciplined after committing abuses. But there are no known cases in which the victims were informed of the punishments, or were allowed to witness them.