Former US diplomat who spied for Cuba sentenced to 15 years in prison
Al Jazeera
Victor Manuel Rocha conducted one of the longest-lasting infiltrations of the US government, the Justice Department said.
Victor Manuel Rocha, a former United States diplomat, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison after admitting to acting as an agent of Cuba, in what the US Department of Justice has called one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the US government.
According to US prosecutors, Rocha secretly supported Cuba’s governing Communist Party and aided the country’s intelligence gathering against Washington for more than four decades, including during a 20-year career in the US Department of State.
“Today’s plea brings an end to more than four decades of betrayal and deceit by Mr Rocha,” David Newman, a senior national security official at the US Justice Department said at a news conference in Miami on Friday.
“For most of his life, Mr Rocha lived a lie.”
Rocha, 73, was arrested in December 2023 at his Miami home on allegations that he had engaged in “clandestine activity” for Cuba since at least 1981 when he started his career as a US diplomat.
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