Former US diplomat who spied for Cuba sentenced to fifteen years in jail | Spy information

International Courant

Victor Manuel Rocha carried out one of many longest infiltrations of the US authorities, the Justice Division stated.

Victor Manuel Rocha, a former US diplomat, has been sentenced to fifteen years in jail after admitting to appearing as an agent of Cuba in what the US Justice Division has known as some of the far-reaching and longest infiltrations of the Cubans named. America Authorities.

U.S. prosecutors say Rocha secretly supported Cuba’s ruling Communist Occasion and helped collect intelligence in opposition to Washington for greater than 40 years, together with throughout a 20-year profession on the U.S. State Division.

“As we speak’s plea ends greater than 4 many years of betrayal and deceit by Mr. Rocha,” David Newman, a senior nationwide safety official on the U.S. Division of Justice, stated at a information convention in Miami on Friday.

“For many of his life, Mr. Rocha lived a lie.”

Rocha, 73, was arrested at his Miami residence in December 2023 on costs that he had engaged in “clandestine actions” for Cuba since at the very least 1981, when he started his profession as a U.S. diplomat.

He was accused of assembly with Cuban intelligence brokers and falsifying details about his contacts to U.S. authorities officers.

An undercover FBI agent posed as a consultant of the Cuban Directorate Common of Intelligence and met with Rocha repeatedly in 2022 and 2023. To this agent, Rocha confessed to his many years of labor for Cuba, a court docket doc exhibits. The officer known as himself “Miguel” and Rocha’s confession was recorded.

Rocha praised the late Cuban chief Fidel Castro and bragged about his service for greater than 4 many years as a Cuban mole on the coronary heart of U.S. overseas coverage circles, prosecutors stated in court docket filings.

“What we have performed… it is large… greater than a Grand Slam,” he stated.

Former Bolivian President Hugo Banzer shakes arms with Victor Manuel Rocha when he was US ambassador to Bolivia in 2000 (File: Reuters)

U.S. officers have stated they might by no means know the total extent of Rocha’s cooperation with Havana.

US-Cuba relations

Relations between Washington and Havana have been tense for greater than 60 years since Castro and his staff of armed revolutionaries overthrew a US-backed dictatorship.

The US authorities then tried to take away Castro in what was known as the Bay of Pigs Invasion and thru a number of assassination makes an attempt over the next many years.

In 1962, Cuba additionally allowed the Soviet Union to secretly set up nuclear missiles, which have been found by way of American surveillance. This Cuban Missile Disaster led to 13 days of pressure, bringing the US and USSR to the brink of nuclear conflict.

Whereas former US President Barack Obama took steps to ease tensions with Cuba, former US President Donald Trump reversed a number of of Obama’s strikes, banning People from touring to Cuba and imposing enterprise sanctions on the island.

Present US President Joe Biden has lifted some Trump-era sanctions on Cuba, however many stay in place, strangling the nation’s economic system.

Furthermore, the United Nations Common Meeting has handed resolutions condemning the U.S. embargo on Cuba with close to unanimity—greater than thirty occasions. Nonetheless, any significant UN motion in opposition to the embargo requires approval by the Safety Council, the place the US has a veto.

Former US diplomat who spied for Cuba sentenced to fifteen years in jail | Spy information

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