US citizen Ana Belén Montes was launched final Friday after greater than 20 years in jail for spying for Cuba. Montes labored as an analyst for the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), however she handed over secrets and techniques to Cuban authorities.
A spokesman for the US Federal Bureau of Prisons, Scott Taylor, reported on Saturday the discharge of Montes, in response to the Puerto Rican press. Montes was being held on the Fort Worth jail in Texas, and he or she is 65 years outdated.
Montes, who started working for the DIA in 1985, was arrested in 2001 by FBI brokers shortly after the 9/11 assaults after being charged with espionage for revealing secret US navy plans to Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
Montes went on to gather shortwave radio coded messages, leak encrypted information and even impersonate another person with a wig and a pretend passport, amongst different anecdotes from his lengthy profession. She was thought of an skilled of the best stage on the Cuban Armed Forces.
The leaking of knowledge from the Puerto Rican, generally known as the ‘Queen of Cuba’, even precipitated the demise of a US Special Forces officer in El Salvador, in response to what CBS reported in December.
Montes traveled to Cuba as much as 4 occasions for conferences with intelligence brokers and obtained quite a few checks in money and even a certificates of distinction that the then CIA director, George Tenet, gave him in 1997, in response to the newspaper ‘The Washington Post’. .
In the felony proceedings, she acknowledged having revealed to the Cuban authorities the identification of 4 undercover United States brokers and confronted a attainable demise sentence if convicted, however reached an settlement with the Prosecutor’s Office to serve a 25-year sentence. jail.
“I participated within the exercise that brings me earlier than you as a result of I obeyed my conscience as a substitute of the regulation,” he testified throughout the trial. “I imagine that our authorities’s coverage in the direction of Cuba is merciless and unfair, and contradictory to the best of the nice neighbor, and I felt compelled to assist the island defend itself from efforts to impose our values and political system on it,” she added.