His father claimed Borges, a graduate of a KGB school, gave Washington the names of 26 Cuban intelligence agents who were about to infiltrate the United States and European nations, and asked for U.S. help winning his freedom.

Borges launched a hunger strike in January at Havana’s Combinado del Este prison to demand his release on parole. He has been imprisoned for 14 years, and Cuba’s military criminal code allows for parole after one third of the sentence is completed.

He halted the fast for a few days after prison officials promised to review his case, and started it again Feb. 10 after he was denied the early release, his father, Raúl Borges, told El Nuevo Herald on Wednesday in a phone call from his home in Havana.

Ortega’s spokesman, Orlando Marquez, confirmed the cardinal met with Borges for more than an hour Tuesday but declined comment on what they discussed. He described Borges as a “Catholic convert” and said the two men had been in contact “for several years” but gave no other details.

The prison visit was a rare gesture for Ortega, who usually shies away from sensitive topics although he has intervened with ruler Raúl Castro to halt harassments of some dissidents and arrange the release of about 115 political prisoners in 2010-2011.

“This indicates that the communications between the hierarchies of the church and the government are still open,” said Havana human rights activists Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz. “It is a visit that raises hopes.”

Raúl Borges said he had indeed asked the Catholic Church, as well as “the international community and many democratic countries” to intercede on his son’s behalf, but learned of the Ortega visit only afterward through a neighborhood parish priest.

He said his son appeared to be “in a truly Dantesque condition” during the last prison visit on Saturday. He has lost about 40 pounds, can barely walk, is short of breath, speaks in short bursts and has pains in his chest and abdomen.

Borges suffers from uneven heartbeats, very low blood pressure and arthritis, yet was taken in chains to the visit with his father and mother, the father added.

Although Borges has been described in reports as the first Cuban government official ever convicted of spying for the United States, his case has received little news media attention over the years.

His father said Borges, who studied for five years at the KGB school in the former Soviet Union, was assigned to counterintelligence work once back in Cuba and was awarded the title of “principal officer” — a high rank within the island’s intelligence community.

But he later turned against Cuba’s communist system “and his decision was to fight the regime from within the regime’s own ranks,” the father added.

He was arrested July 17 of 1998, the same year that five members of Cuba’s “Wasp” spy network in South Florida were swept up by the FBI. One former Cuban intelligence agent said he had heard an unconfirmed report several years ago that the two cases could be linked.

jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com