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Cuba admits spy link
20/10/2002 09:52 - (SA)
Havana - Cuba for the first time has acknowledged ties to the former
senior US intelligence analyst, Ana Belen Montes, sentenced this
week to 25 years jail for spying for Havana's communist government.
Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque said Montes had ties with
Havana "compelled by ethics and an admirable sense of justice".
Montes (45) who had worked at the Defence Intelligence Agency
(DIA), was accused of jeopardising top secret information,
revealing the identity of four US agents operating on Cuba, as well
as details of US naval maneuvers off the island.
"I feel deep respect and admiration for Ana Belen Montes. She
has already spoken for herself about her relationship with Cuba and
her motivations," Perez Roque added in response to an online query
late on Friday.
Montes, a US citizen of Puerto Rican ancestry, was arrested in
September 2001 by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents at
the DIA offices at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington.
She pleaded guilty in March to spying for Fidel Castro's regime
from 1985 to 2001. At the time, her defence attorney, Plato
Cacheris, said he had worked out a deal that would send her to
prison in exchange for information on Cuban intelligence
operations.
On top of the quarter century jail term, Montes was also ordered
to follow five years of supervision after her release.
"I felt morally obliged to help"
The sentence followed a plea bargain under which Montes agreed
to give information on the intelligence activities she was involved
in.
"I believe that our government's policy towards Cuba is cruel
and unfair, profoundly unneighbourly, and I felt morally obliged to
help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose our values
and our political system on it" she told the court.
US District Court Judge Ricardo Urbina said she had committed
treason.
"If you can't love your country, then at the very least you
should do it no wrong," he told her.
Cuba's top diplomat said Montes "said she had received no money
from Cuba and I can confirm that. She acted compelled by her ethics
and an admirable sense of justice".
"The day aggression and terrorist attacks against Cuba stop and
we are allowed to live in peace it will no longer be necessary for
men and women of the moral stature of Ana Belen Montes..., to
sacrifice their lives, their families and personal interests to
defend our people's tranquility and right to live," Perez Roque
added.
But he stressed "Cuba has not spied and does not spy on the
United States. It does not need to. It wants normal and respectful
relations with that country".
Unlike other spies uncovered in recent years, such as the FBI's
Robert Hansen and the Central Intelligence Agency's Aldrich Ames,
Montes spied for ideological reasons, not for money.
Montes, born at a US military base in Nuremberg, southern
Germany, had worked for the DIA since 1985 and was the agency's
senior analyst for Cuban issues. - Sapa-AFP
- SAPA
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