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The Miami
Herald, October 17, 2002.
Cuban dissident to be released after serving 3 years, wife says
By Wilfredo Cancio Isla. El Nuevo Herald
Dr. Oscar Elías Biscet, one of the most prominent political
dissidents imprisoned in Cuba, will be released Oct. 31 after serving a
three-year sentence, his wife said Wednesday.
Elsa Morejón told El Nuevo Herald from Havana that the authorities
asked her to report at 8 a.m. that day to the Cuba Sí prison in the
eastern city of Holguín to pick up her husband.
''He is in high spirits and intent on continuing his peaceful struggle for
human rights in Cuba,'' Morejón said on the phone. ''He wants to continue
to live and work inside Cuba,'' she added.
Morejón thanked Cubans abroad for their material and moral support.
''This has been a very tough period in our lives, but human solidarity has
brought enormous spiritual compensation,'' she said.
Biscet, a 41-year-old physician who founded the Lawton Foundation for Human
Rights, was arrested Nov. 3, 1999, with several other dissidents, just before
the Ninth Ibero-American Summit was held in Havana.
He was charged with "insulting national symbols, [creating] public
disorder and instigating criminal activity.''
Biscet admitted displaying a Cuban flag upside down as a protest against the
regime during a press conference but said he did not mean it as disrespect for
the nation.
Although prosecutors asked for a seven-year sentence, the court gave him a
three-year term after a four-hour trial Feb. 25, 2000.
Until that arrest, Biscet had been detained by Cuban State Security police
25 times in previous years, after he launched a series of highly publicized
protests. In the summer of 1999, he led a 40-day fast -- one day for each year
of Fidel Castro's rule -- to demand the release of all political prisoners.
In Havana on Wednesday, dissident Marta Beatriz Roque -- who was herself
arrested in July 1997 and held in prison for three years -- asked foreign
reporters to travel to Holguín and cover Biscet's release.
Herald staff translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.
Spy for Cuba gets a 25-year term
By Tim Johnson. tjohnson@herald.com. Posted on Thu, Oct.
17, 2002
WASHINGTON - The most senior spy for Cuba ever to penetrate the top ranks of
the U.S. intelligence community declared at her sentencing Wednesday that U.S.
policy toward Cuba is ''cruel and unfair'' and that she felt "morally
obligated to help the island defend itself.''
Ana Belén Montes, a former senior analyst for the Defense
Intelligence Agency, offered her first public account -- an unapologetic and
unrepentant explanation -- of why she began to spy for Cuba 17 years ago.
Montes said Washington has "displayed intolerance and contempt toward
Cuba for most of the last four decades.''
U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina gave Montes a 25-year prison term,
followed by five years of parole. Once free, she must perform 500 hours of
community service. Apparently dismayed by her lack of remorse, Urbina curtly
wished her ''good luck'' at the end of the brief hearing.
Prosecutors said Montes began her spy career for the Fidel Castro government
in 1985 just as she began working at the top-secret Defense Intelligence Agency,
where she rose to become the senior analyst on Cuba. Federal agents arrested her
days after the Sept. 11 terror attacks last year.
''She did grave damage to this country,'' said Roscoe Howard Jr., the U.S.
attorney for the District of Columbia. "We thought she owed the country an
apology. We're disappointed she didn't provide it.''
HER EXPLANATION
Dressed in a prison-issue striped gray-and-white uniform, Montes laid out
her only public explanation to date of why she became a turncoat for Cuba.
''Your honor, I engaged in the activity that brought me before you because I
obeyed my conscience rather than the law,'' Montes said.
Montes, a 45-year-old of Puerto Rican descent, wore her dark hair cropped
short. She appeared alert, and her voice wavered only briefly.
''I believe our government's policy towards Cuba is cruel and unfair,
profoundly unneighborly, and I felt morally obligated to help the island defend
itself from our efforts to impose our values and our political system on it,''
Montes said, reading from a two-page statement.
She expressed contrition only slightly and subtly justified her actions.
''My way of responding to our Cuba policy may have been morally wrong,'' she
said. "Perhaps Cuba's right to exist, free of political and economic
coercion, did not justify giving the island classified information to help it
defend itself. I can only say that I did what I thought right to counter a grave
injustice.''
Urbina looked unsettled by her explanation.
''Today is a very sad day,'' he said. "It's a very sad day for you,
Miss Montes, for your family, for your loved ones, for every American who loves
this country.''
Urbina said Montes "decided to put your fellow Americans in harm's way.
For this, you must pay a penalty.''
Details of her espionage career remain largely secret. The government has
said she gave ''secret'' and ''top secret'' information to the Cuban
intelligence service and communicated with her handlers through encrypted
messages and numeric shortwave transmissions from Cuba.
In court papers, prosecutors said Montes revealed the identities of at least
four U.S. undercover agents to Cuba. None of the agents were harmed.
Unlike other major U.S. spies in the past decade, Montes sought no money
other than minor expenses, and spied on behalf of Cuba out of ideological
conviction.
Cuba has not spoken publicly about the Montes arrest or confession.
Diplomats at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington did not respond to a new
request for comment.
The arrest of Montes last year stunned many members of the U.S. intelligence
community, some of whom considered her a model employee. A graduate of the
University of Virginia, Montes obtained a master's degree from Johns Hopkins
University and rose steadily through the ranks of the DIA after her start there
in 1985.
Still a mystery is what motivated Montes, who grew up in an upper
middle-class suburb of Baltimore and is the daughter of a psychiatrist, to
sympathize so greatly with Cuba that she would risk her life and career for the
communist regime. Montes, who is single, was dating an employee of the Defense
Department at the time of her arrest.
Howard, the U.S. prosecutor, declined to say what tipped off
counterintelligence agents to focus on Montes. They apparently began the probe
in May 2001, four months before her arrest.
''We caught her at a good time,'' Howard said. "We didn't have a loss
of life. But there's no telling where this would have gone.''
PLEA AGREEMENT
Wednesday's sentencing was the result of a plea agreement Montes reached
with federal prosecutors in March that required her to undergo debriefings about
what she had revealed to the Cubans and the techniques of her espionage.
Howard said Montes had ''fully cooperated'' with counterintelligence
officers during the debriefings and that the government is "satisfied.''
In a court filing last week, however, Howard said Montes remains
unrepentant.
''This defendant is totally unapologetic for her conduct,'' Howard wrote in
the filing. "In an act of incredible arrogance and ultimate selfishness,
she stands before this court unwilling to repudiate her betrayal of the United
States.''
Spy's statement at her sentencing
Here is the statement read in federal court Wednesday by Ana Belen
Montes, who received a 25-year jail sentence for a lengthy spying career for
Cuba.
'An Italian proverb perhaps best describes the fundamental truth I believe
in: 'All the world is one country.' In such a 'world-country,' the principle of
loving one's neighbor as much as oneself seems, to me, to be the essential guide
to harmonious relations between all of our ''nation-neighborhoods.'' This
principle urges tolerance and understanding for the different ways of others. It
asks that we treat other nations the way we wish to be treated -- with respect
and compassion. It is a principle that, tragically, I believe we have never
applied to Cuba.
"Your honor, I engaged in the activity that brought me before you
because I obeyed my conscience rather than the law. I believe our government's
policy towards Cuba is cruel and unfair, profoundly unneighborly, and I felt
morally obligated to help the island defend itself from our efforts to impose
our values and our political system on it. We have displayed intolerance and
contempt towards Cuba for most of the last four decades. We have never respected
Cuba's right to make its own journey towards its own ideals of equality and
justice. I do not understand why we must continue to dictate how the Cubans
should select their leaders, who their leaders cannot be, and what laws are
appropriate in their land. Why can't we let Cuba pursue its own internal
journey, as the United States has been doing for over two centuries?
"My way of responding to our Cuba policy may have been morally wrong.
Perhaps Cuba's right to exist free of political and economic coercion did not
justify giving the island classified information to help it defend itself. I can
only say that I did what I thought right to counter a grave injustice.
'My greatest desire is to see amicable relations emerge between the United
States and Cuba. I hope my case in some way will encourage our government to
abandon its hostility towards Cuba and to work with Havana in a spirit of
tolerance, mutual respect, and understanding. Today we see more clearly than
ever that intolerance and hatred -- by individuals or governments -- spread only
pain and suffering. I hope for a U.S. policy that is based instead on neighborly
love, a policy that recognizes that Cuba, like any nation, wants to be treated
with dignity and not with contempt. Such a policy would bring our government
back in harmony with the compassion and generosity of the American people. It
would allow Cubans and Americans to learn from and share with each other. It
would enable Cuba to drop its defensive measures and experiment more easily with
changes. And it would permit the two neighbors to work together and with other
nations to promote tolerance and cooperation in our one 'world-country,' in our
only 'world-homeland.' '' | 
