MADRID, Spain.- Ana Belén Montes, who was a spy for the Cuban government for 17 years, was released this Sunday and is now in Puerto Rico, her parents’ native country.
Montes was arrested on September 21, 2001, accused of espionage in favor of the Government of Cuba. In 2002 she pleaded guilty and she was sentenced to 25 years in prison and five years of probation, which she will have to serve now.
In a statement issued upon her release, and shared by the media The new day, Montes declared: “I am more than happy to touch Puerto Rican soil again. After two rather grueling decades and in need of earning a living again, I would like to pursue a quiet and private existence. Therefore, I will not participate in any media activities.”
Ana Belen Montes, the lead analyst of the United States Defense Intelligence Agency, also said: “I encourage those who want to focus on me to focus instead on important issues, such as the serious problems facing the Puerto Rican people or the economic embargo from the United States to Cuba.
“Who in the last 60 years has asked the Cuban people if they want the United States to impose a suffocating embargo that makes them suffer?” he added.
According to her lawyer, Linda Backiel, this statement will be “the only public expression authorized by, or on behalf of, her in relation to her release.”
After Montes’s release, Republican Senator Marco Rubio recalled that “she was not a harmless informant,” but that “her leaks broke the coverage of 450 US agents working in Latin America… and in 1996, her information also allowed the Castros to bring down two American planes carrying the heroes of Brothers to the Rescue.
“His betrayal of the United States achieved nothing for the Cuban people. On the contrary, by helping the criminal Castro regime, Montes strengthened the worst enemy of the Cuban people,” stated Marco Rubio.
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