US Releases Spy After 20 Years

The US Bureau of prisons has confirmed the release of Ana Montes, one of the highest-ranking US officials ever proven to have spied for Cuba.

Report says Ms. Montes was released from prison early after she spent more than two decades behind bars.

Ms. Montes had in 2002 pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit espionage after she was accused of using her leading position as a Defense Intelligence Agency, DIA official to leak information, including identities of some US spies, to Havana.

Prosecutors said during this time Montes received coded messages from Havana over a short-wave radio as strings of numbers, which she would type onto a decryption-equipped laptop to translate to text.

Ricardo Urbina, the sentencing judge, ruled she put fellow US citizens and the “nation as a whole” at risk.

She was sentenced to 25 years in prison.

While on her release from prison, Urbino had ordered Montes should be placed under supervision for five years, with her internet access monitored, and a ban from working for governments and contacting foreign agents without permission.

Under President Joe Biden, the United States has eased some sanctions on Cuba but maintained its Cold War-era embargo on the island and stepped up restrictions on illegal migrants, arriving in record levels amid raging inflation and medicine shortages.

REUTERS/Christopher Ojilere