By Bernd Debusmann JrBBC Information, Washington5 hours agoImage supply, Getty ImagesImage caption, Victor Rocha abruptly reversed his plea in February after initially pleading not responsible to the costs.An ex-career diplomat who as soon as served as US ambassador to Bolivia has been sentenced to fifteen years in jail for working as an agent for Cuba. Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, secretly handed info to the Cuban authorities for greater than 40 years, in keeping with prosecutors. In February, Rocha modified his preliminary not responsible plea in a Miami court docket and ensured he would keep away from a trial. The espionage case is among the many highest profile ever between the US and Cuba.Wearing a beige jail uniform on Friday, Rocha advised a federal courtroom in Miami: “I plead guilty.” Along with jail, Rocha should additionally pay a $500,000 effective and cooperate with authorities.US Legal professional Basic Merrick Garland referred to Rocha’s crimes as “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the US government by a foreign agent”.The Colombian-born, Yale and Harvard-educated Rocha served as US ambassador to Bolivia between 1999 and 2022, in addition to in a wide range of different diplomatic postings in Argentina, Honduras, Mexico and the Dominican Republic. He additionally served in different authorities roles, together with one with the Nationwide Safety Council. After his diplomatic service ended, Rocha served as a advisor for the US army’s Southern Command, which oversees all of Latin America and the Caribbean – together with communist Cuba. In November 2022, an undercover FBI agent contacted Rocha on WhatsApp and claimed to be engaged on behalf of Cuba’s intelligence service. The agent mentioned he was delivering a message from “your friends in Havana”, in keeping with court docket paperwork. Over the course of three subsequent conferences, Rocha revealed particulars of his earlier espionage on Cuba’s behalf. At one level, Rocha used the time period “we” to explain Cuba and himself, vowing to “protect” what “we” have completed collectively. When requested whether or not he was “still with us”, Rocha advised the secret agent that he was “angry” that his loyalty to the Cuban regime was being questioned. “It’s like questioning my manhood,” he mentioned.The US has had a tense relationship with Cuba ever since Fidel Castro overthrew the island’s US-backed authorities in 1959, a revolution that was swiftly adopted by a US commerce embargo. Whereas then-president Barack Obama and former Cuban President Raul Castro took steps to normalise relations in 2015, lots of these actions have been reversed by the Trump administration. In an interview with the BBC, former CIA counter-intelligence chief James Olson mentioned the case was emblematic of how Cuba’s intelligence service “beat” their US adversaries over the a long time. “They owned us,” Mr Olson mentioned. “That’s one of the reasons I have this personal grudge against the Cuban intelligence service because they have been so successful in operating against us.”Mr Olson referred to Rocha as a “traitor”. “He betrayed our country,” he mentioned. “I think that’s contemptible, and I don’t think he’s going to see the light of day again.”
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