Authorities in Vietnam have sent an ailing Catholic priest and one of the country's best-known democracy activists back to jail more than a year after his release on medical parole, an official said Tuesday. The Rev. Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly, 64, was escorted by police from his home at a church in central Hue city to Ba Sao prison outside the northern capital of Hanoi on Monday night, a prison official said on condition of anonymity, citing policy. In March 2010, Ly, a longtime human rights activist, was released from prison because he had a brain tumor and had suffered three strokes during his three years in custody. Ly's one-year medical parole expired March 15 and he defied a court order to send him back to jail, the official said, adding that authorities had to force him back to prison. "His health is better than the time when he was released," the official said, "but for a man who had suffered strokes, it's hard to recover fully." The official said Ly was in "normal health condition" after making the 300-mile (500-kilometer) trip from Hue to the prison, and that he uses crutches to help him walk. The official said that during his parole, Ly continued to oppose the communist regime by distributing anti-government leaflets and accusing Vietnamese leaders of being too soft on China in the countries' ongoing territorial dispute in the South China Sea. Ly has been in and out of prison and house arrest for years, most recently for helping found a group called Bloc 8406, which promotes multiparty democracy. In 2007, Ly was sentenced to eight years in prison for disseminating anti-government propaganda during a dramatic trial in which police muzzled him for shouting anti-communist slogans and accusing Vietnamese officials of practicing "the law of the jungle."