MADRID, 8 Ene. (EUROPA PRESS) –
US citizen Ana Belén Montes was released last Friday after more than 20 years in prison for spying for Cuba. Montes worked as an analyst for the US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), but she was handing over secrets to Cuban authorities.
A spokesman for the US Federal Bureau of Prisons, Scott Taylor, informed the release of Montes on Saturday, according to the Puerto Rican press. Montes was being held at the Fort Worth prison in Texas, and she is 65 years old.
Montes, who began working for the DIA in 1985, was arrested in 2001 by FBI agents shortly after the 9/11 attacks after being charged with espionage for revealing secret US military plans to Fidel Castro’s Cuba.
Montes went on to collect shortwave radio coded messages, leak encrypted files and even impersonate someone else with a wig and a fake passport, among other anecdotes from his long career. She was considered an expert of the highest level on the Cuban Armed Forces.
The leaking of information from the Puerto Rican, known as the ‘Queen of Cuba’, even caused the death of a US Special Forces officer in El Salvador, according to what CBS reported in December.
Montes traveled to Cuba up to four times for meetings with intelligence agents and received numerous checks in cash and even a certificate of distinction that the then CIA director, George Tenet, gave him in 1997, according to the newspaper ‘The Washington Post’. .
In the criminal proceedings, she acknowledged having revealed to the Cuban authorities the identity of four undercover United States agents and she faced a possible death sentence if convicted, but she reached an agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office to serve a 25-year sentence. prison.
“I participated in the activity that brings me before you because I obeyed my conscience instead of the law,” he testified during the trial. “I believe that our government’s policy towards Cuba is cruel and unfair, and contradictory to the ideal of the good neighbor, and I felt compelled to help the island defend itself from efforts to impose our values ??and political system on it,” she added.
