A former US ambassador who pleaded responsible to spying for Cuba for over 4 a long time was sentenced in federal court docket on Friday to fifteen years in jail.

Victor Manuel Rocha, 73, was arrested in December for what US officers known as “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent.”

Rocha pleaded not responsible in February to prices of conspiring to behave as an agent of a international authorities however later accepted a plea cope with federal prosecutors.

Judge Beth Bloom, after a three-and-a-half-hour listening to in Miami on Friday, advised Rocha she would give him “the maximum penalty permitted by law.”

In addition to the 15-year sentence, Rocha was given a $500,000 wonderful.

Rocha, a naturalized US citizen initially from Colombia, allegedly started aiding Havana as a covert agent of Cuba’s General Directorate of Intelligence (DGI) in 1981, and his espionage actions continued till his arrest, in keeping with US authorities.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, saying Rocha’s arrest in December, stated he had “repeatedly referred to the United States as ‘the enemy'” and “repeatedly bragged about the significance of his efforts.”

Rocha joined the State Department in 1981 and rose by way of the ranks as a profession diplomat, serving in posts in Havana, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Washington.

Rocha served on the National Security Council from 1994 to 1995 within the administration of president Bill Clinton, and was the ambassador to Bolivia from 2000 to 2002 underneath Clinton and George W. Bush. He additionally served as an advisor to the US navy command chargeable for Cuba.

The felony grievance in opposition to Rocha particulars how, over a number of conferences with an undercover FBI agent starting in November 2022, he “behaved as a Cuban agent,” praising the communist-ruled island’s late chief Fidel Castro and “using the term ‘we’ to describe himself and Cuba.”

“Despite swearing an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States, Rocha betrayed the US by secretly working as a Cuban agent for decades,” stated Larissa Knapp, government assistant director of the FBI’s National Security Branch.

“After years of lying and endangering national security and US citizens, he finally accepted responsibility for his actions and received the maximum prison sentence.”

Numerous espionage circumstances have marred relations between the 2 nations, which have been enemies since Cuba’s Communist revolution in 1959, on the top of the Cold War.

Rocha’s arrest and conviction come round 15 years after the indictment of Walter Kendall Myers and Gwendolyn Myers, an American couple who spied for Cuba for practically 30 years.

Kendall Myers was sentenced to life imprisonment, whereas his spouse was sentenced to over 5 years.

And in 2001, navy intelligence analyst Ana Montes was arrested on espionage prices, later admitting that she had been gathering intelligence for Cuba for nearly a decade.

Cuba has been underneath a US embargo since 1962, and is on a State Department checklist of state sponsors of terrorism.