Zoom News, a digital newspaper based in Madrid, meanwhile reported that Carromero was allowed to leave Cuba only after secret negotiations between family representatives and “unofficial Cuban agents” agreed to a payment of $3 million. It gave no further details on the payment.

Carromero, 27, and the Popular Party also had to promise that they will keep silent about the real cause of the crash, Zoom News added, noting that it received the information from sources unidentified but “directly involved in the negotiations.”

Spain’s consul general in Cuba, Tomás Rodríguez Pantoja, also was forced to sign a document affirming that Carromero’s trial had been just and fair, according to the report.

Carromero’s long-time political mentor, Pablo Casado, declared, however, that his release “did not involve any payment whatsoever, and was the result of a diplomatic success” by Spain’s Foreign Ministry.

Casado, who heads the Madrid section of the Popular Party’s youth wing, and Esperanza Aguirre, president of the Popular Party in Madrid, drove Carromero’s mother to visit him Sunday in the Segovia Penitentiary Center prison 60 miles northwest of Madrid.

Only the mother was allowed to visit him, and Aguirre afterwards read to journalists a letter for Carromero saying that “the suffering you bore from a communist dictatorship will strengthen you and will make your commitment to the defense of freedom grow.”

Cuban government officials alleged that Carromero and Modig, a youth leader of the Swedish Christian Democratic party, went to Cuba to deliver cash assistance to Payá and other dissidents.