Cuba releases former intelligence officer accused of spying for the U.S. after 27 years
Ernesto Borges Pérez, a former Cuban counterintelligence officer who served 27 years in prison after he was convicted of spying for the U.S., was released Thursday from the high-security Combinado del Este prison in Havana.
Trained by the KGB, Borges was a 32-year-old counterintelligence captain and first officer in the Interior Ministry when he was arrested in July 1998 for attempting to pass the identities of 26 Cuban intelligence agents about to infiltrate the United States and Europe to a U.S. diplomat in Havana, his father, Raúl Borges, told el Nuevo Herald in 2012.
He was charged with attempted espionage and sentenced to 30 years in a one-day trial in January 1999. Reports described him as the first Cuban government official ever convicted of spying for the United States.
Borges had been eligible for parole years ago but had been denied the benefit despite staging hunger strikes and developing several health ailments, including untreated cataracts that affected his vision. After one hunger strike, the late Cuban cardinal Jaime Ortega visited him at the prison in 2012, raising hopes the Catholic Church could help bring about his release.
He was also reportedly floated as one of the U.S. assets that could have been exchanged for five spies of Cuba's 'Wasp' network in South Florida, which was swept up by the FBI in 1998, the same year of Borges' arrest. The Obama administration ultimately secured the release of another Cuban imprisoned for spying for the U.S, Rolando Sarraf, in a prisoner exchange in 2014.
Activists have lately raised suspicion that Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. diplomat who was stationed at the U.S. embassy in Havana at the time of Borges' arrest, might have played a role in his detention. Rocha was sentenced in the U.S to 15 years in prison last year for acting as a foreign agent of Cuba. An official review of the damage caused by Rocha's activities on behalf of Cuba has not been made public.
In a call with Martí Noticias, a U.S.-government-funded news outlet, Borges expressed gratitude for those advocating for the release of political prisoners on the island.
'I wish they would listen to the people of Cuba. I wish they would understand that it is necessary to engage in dialogue with those who think differently, both inside and outside of Cuba,' he said. 'I wish God would touch their hearts, and I wish to have a transition process that would be as painless as possible.'
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