[ad_1]
(Reuters) – Ana Belen Montes, one of many highest-ranking U.S. officers ever confirmed to have spied for Cuba, has been launched from jail early, the U.S. Bureau of Prisons confirmed Friday, after she spent greater than twenty years behind bars.
Montes, 65, had in 2002 pleaded responsible to conspiracy to commit espionage after she was accused of utilizing her main place as a Protection Intelligence Company (DIA) official to leak info, together with identities of some U.S. spies, to Havana.
Aged 45, she was sentenced to 25 years in jail.
A U.S. citizen of Puerto Rican descent, Montes started working for the DIA in 1985 and quickly climbed its ranks to grow to be the company’s prime Cuba analyst.
Prosecutors stated throughout this time Montes acquired coded messages from Havana over a short-wave radio as strings of numbers, which she would kind onto a decryption-equipped laptop computer to translate to textual content.
Political Cartoons on World Leaders
She was accused of supplying the id of 4 U.S. spies to Cuba, in addition to different labeled info.
Montes was arrested on Sept. 21, 2001, shortly earlier than the USA invaded Afghanistan. Her lawyer, a number one espionage specialist, had argued she had cooperated with out reservation.
At her sentencing a yr later, Montes argued that she had obeyed her conscience and that U.S. coverage to Cuba was merciless and unfair. “I felt morally obligated to assist the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it,” she stated.
Ricardo Urbina, the sentencing choose, dominated she put fellow U.S. residents and the “nation as an entire” in danger.
On her launch from jail, Urbino had ordered Montes needs to be positioned below supervision for 5 years, along with her web entry monitored and a ban from working for governments and contacting international brokers with out permission.
Beneath President Joe Biden, the USA has eased some sanctions on Cuba however maintained its Chilly Battle-era embargo on the island and stepped up restrictions on unlawful migrants, arriving in document ranges amid raging inflation and medication shortages.
(Reporting by Sarah Morland and Eric Beech; Modifying by Simon Cameron-Moore)
Copyright 2023 Thomson Reuters.
[ad_2]
Source link
