Former US ambassador sentenced to fifteen years for spying for Cuba | World News
A former US ambassador who pleaded responsible to spying for Cuba for over 4 a long time was sentenced in federal court docket on Friday to fifteen years in jail.
Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, was arrested in December for what US officers referred to as “one of many highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of america authorities by a international agent.”
Rocha pleaded not responsible in February to expenses of conspiring to behave as an agent of a international authorities however later accepted a plea take care of federal prosecutors.
Along with the 15-year sentence, Rocha was given a $500,000 wonderful.
Rocha, a naturalized US citizen initially from Colombia, allegedly started aiding Havana as a covert agent of Cuba’s Common Directorate of Intelligence (DGI) in 1981, and his espionage actions continued till his arrest, in accordance with US authorities.
Legal professional Common Merrick Garland, asserting Rocha’s arrest in December, stated he had “repeatedly referred to america as ‘the enemy'” and “repeatedly bragged in regards to the significance of his efforts.”
Rocha joined the State Division in 1981 and rose by the ranks as a profession diplomat, serving in posts in Havana, Buenos Aires, Mexico Metropolis and Washington.
Rocha served on the Nationwide Safety Council from 1994 to 1995 within the administration of president Invoice Clinton, and was the ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002 underneath Clinton and George W. Bush. He additionally served as an advisor to the US army command liable for Cuba.
The prison criticism towards Rocha particulars how, over a number of conferences with an undercover FBI agent starting in November 2022, he “behaved as a Cuban agent,” praising the communist-ruled island’s late chief Fidel Castro and “utilizing the time period ‘we’ to explain himself and Cuba.”
“Regardless of swearing an oath to defend the Structure of america, Rocha betrayed the US by secretly working as a Cuban agent for many years,” stated Larissa Knapp, government assistant director of the FBI’s Nationwide Safety Department.
Quite a few espionage circumstances have marred relations between the 2 international locations, which have been enemies since Cuba’s Communist revolution in 1959, on the top of the Chilly Conflict.
Rocha’s arrest and conviction come round 15 years after the indictment of Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Myers, an American couple who spied for Cuba for practically 30 years.
Kendall Myers was sentenced to life imprisonment, whereas his spouse was sentenced to over 5 years.
And in 2001, army intelligence analyst Ana Montes was arrested on espionage expenses, later admitting that she had been gathering intelligence for Cuba for nearly a decade.
Cuba has been underneath a US embargo since 1962, and is on a State Division checklist of state sponsors of terrorism.
