Aide to Cuba’s Ricardo Alarcon sentenced to 30 years for spying

Posted on Saturday, 02.08.14



CUBA

Aide to Cuba's Ricardo Alarcon sentenced to 30 years for spying

BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

JTAMAYO@ELNUEVOHERALD.COM



A top aide to one of Cuba's veteran political figures, Ricardo Alarcón,

and the aide's wife, have been convicted of spying and sentenced to 30

and 15 years in prison, according to persons close to the case.



Miguel Alvarez and Mercedes Arce, both former Cuban intelligence

analysts in their 50s, were tried and convicted in December, the persons

said, 22 months after they were detained in Havana for interrogation on

March 3, 2012.



Alvarez was sentenced to 30 years on charges that he leaked secret

information to Arce, according to the sources. Arce got the lesser

sentence for allegedly using the information to write analytical reports

on Cuba that she sold to private companies in Mexico.



Alvarez is the most senior Cuban official known to have been convicted

of spying against the communist government in decades. At least three

other Cubans are imprisoned on the island for spying, including two

former Interior Ministry officials.



The Cuban government has repeatedly offered to swap U.S. government

subcontractor Alan Gross, imprisoned in Havana since 2009, for four

Havana spies held in U.S. prisons since 1998. But it has made no mention

of the spies held in Cuban prisons.



The island's state-controlled news media, which almost never reports on

politically sensitive crimes, has published nothing on the Alvarez-Arce

case. Relatives also have not commented publicly, hoping their silence

will lead to better treatment for the couple.



There has been no indication of the seriousness of the breach of

security allegedly created by Alvarez and Arce, but the Cuban government

jealously guards even routine information such as sugar harvest figures

and Fidel Castro's home address.



Alvarez was a senior advisor to Alarcón on international and political

affairs when Alarcón served as president of the legislative National

Assembly of People's Power, sitting in on many of his meetings with

foreign dignitaries and journalists.



Alarcón, 77, a veteran specialist on U.S. relations, headed the National

Assembly for 20 years but was replaced in February of last year, 11

months after the Alvarez and Arce arrests. corru



He is believed to remain a member of the powerful Political Bureau of

the Communist Party. Alarcón is seen in public now mostly pushing the

government campaign to free the four Cuban spies in U.S. prisons.



Former Florida International University professor Carlos Alvarez (no

relation to the Alarcón aide), who was convicted of spying for Havana,

described Arce in his confession as one of his Cuban intelligence

handlers. He and his wife, Elsa Prieto, were sentenced in 2007 to five

and three years in prison, respectively.



A biography published by the Cuban business magazine Futuros said Arce

was assigned to the Cuban mission to the United Nations as an analyst on

U.S. foreign policy from 1977 to 1983 -- about the same time her husband

was also working at the mission. Alarcón served as ambassador to the

U.N. from 1966 to 1978.



She later headed the Center for the Study of Alternative Politics at the

University of Havana, which hosted several seminars with foreign

academics on conflict resolution issues. Several defectors have said

Cuban intelligence agents used the Center to spot foreigners who might

be recruited to spy for Havana.



The biography says Arce has a doctorate from the University of Havana,

and a master's in psychology from the New School for Social Research in

New York. She also has worked for two Norwegian nongovernment

organizations active in Central America.



A Cuban academic who knows Alvarez and Arce said they worked in the

1970s and 1980s as analysts in the Intelligence Directorate of the

Interior Ministry. But they fell into disfavor after the 1992 dismissal

of Carlos Aldana, head of ideology for the Communist Party and a key

promoter of the Alternative Politics center.



Alarcón later hired Alvarez for his office while Arce went to Mexico,

teaching at a university there and writing reports on the Cuban economy

and politics that she sold to foreign companies, according to the

academic. He asked for anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the

case.



Initial reports on the couple's arrests, indicating that they were under

investigation on charges of corruption, sparked speculation that they

had been targeted in order to bring down Alarcón.



At the height of his influence Alarcón was sometimes described as the

third most important official on the island after Fidel and Raúl Castro.

A skilled foreign policy operator who dealt often with Cuba's Cold War

enemies in Washington, he was elected to the Central Committee of the

Communist Party in 1980 and the Politburo in 1992.



Several El Nuevo Herald calls to the homes of Alarcón and Alvarez in

Havana went unanswered.



The Alvarez and Arce convictions bring to five the number of Cubans

known to be currently imprisoned on the island on charges of spying



Rolando Sarraf Trujillo, an expert on cryptography at the Interior

Ministry's Intelligence Directorate, was convicted in 1995 of passing

state secrets to the U.S. government. He is serving a 25-year sentence.

His family maintains he is innocent.



Ernesto Borges, 47, a captain in the Interior Ministry's Directorate of

Counter-Intelligence, was arrested in 1998 for trying to deliver secret

information to U.S. diplomats in Havana. He is serving a 30-year sentence.



José Antonio Torres, a Granma newspaper reporter, was arrested in 2011

for investigation on a charge of spying. He remains in prison, fellow

inmates say, but it's unclear whether he was ever convicted.



Friends say the spying charge was a fraud, drummed up by some of the

corrupt and inept government officials he wrote about in a 2010 report

on a badly mismanaged aqueduct construction project in the eastern

province of Santiago de Cuba.



Gross is serving a 15-year sentence for illegally providing Cuban Jews

with sophisticated communications equipment, paid for by the U.S.

government as part of its pro-democracy programs for the island. U.S.

officials have said they will not trade the Cuban spies in U.S. prisons

for Gross because he is not a spy.



The five Cubans were convicted in a Miami trial in 2001. Prosecutors

presented evidence the "Wasp Network" spied on U.S. military

installations, and Cuban exile groups, but Havana claims the "Five

Heroes" were trying to avert exile terror plots.



One of the five finished his sentence and is back in Cuba, and a second

is to be freed from prison Feb. 27. Two others are serving sentences of

22 and 30 years, and the fifth is serving a life term for the deaths of

four South Florida men shot down by Cuban MiGs in 1996.



Source: Aide to Cuba's Ricardo Alarcon sentenced to 30 years for spying

- Nation - MiamiHerald.com -

http://www.miamiherald.com/2014/02/08/3922766/aide-to-cubas-ricardo-alarcon.html