Two men, 7,400 miles apart, each recently behind bars. One is a longtime dissident. The other is — or was — an apolitical man, who happened to be a convenient target for a regime that likes to take hostages.

Neither knows of the other. They are indissolubly linked.

The first man, José Daniel Ferrer, is founder of the Patriotic Union of Cuba, the largest dissident organization on the island. In 2003 he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for demanding democracy, civil liberties and amnesty. He served eight years in conditions he described, when I met him a few years ago, as a series of “constant terrors.”

Unbowed, he returned to his political work. On Oct. 1, he and several other activists were arrested by Cuban security agents. For weeks his whereabouts were unknown. After his wife was finally allowed a five-minute visit, she reported signs of torture.

Last week, Granma, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, accused the U.S. Embassy in Havana of “orienting and financing the conduct of José Daniel Ferrer, in a clear demonstration of interference in Cuba’s internal affairs and open instigation to violence.” An associate of Ferrer tells me he has endured a dramatic physical deterioration and that there are fears for his life; his mentor, Oswaldo Payá, is widely believed to have been assassinated by state agents in a staged accident in 2012.