CARACAS, Venezuela — Even as President Hugo Chávez slowly recovers in Cuba from cancer surgery, one of his most prominent sources of intellectual inspiration, the American linguist Noam Chomsky, is asking Mr. Chávez to show compassion for another Venezuelan facing a health battle of her own.

In a public letter to be distributed here on Sunday, Mr. Chomsky urges Mr. Chávez to free from house arrest María Lourdes Afiuni, a judge arrested in December 2009 by the president’s secret intelligence police. At the time of her arrest, Mr. Chávez said on national television that she would have been put before a firing squad in earlier times.

Judge Afiuni, 48, spent more than a year in a women’s prison where other prisoners threatened to kill her and tried to force her into sex.

In February, she underwent a total abdominal hysterectomy at a cancer hospital here and was moved to house arrest. She is still prohibited from speaking to the news media.