Cuban jailed in Havana for spying for US stages hunger strike

Posted on Thursday, 03.01.12

Cuban jailed in Havana for spying for US stages hunger strike
By Juan O. Tamayo
jtamayo@ElNuevoHerald.com

Cuban Cardinal Jaime Ortega has met with a Cuban intelligence officer
imprisoned in Havana for spying for the United States, and now reported
to be in failing health after a three-week hunger strike to demand his
release.

Ernesto Borges Pérez, a former captain in the Interior Ministry's
counterintelligence section, was convicted in a one-day trial in 1999
and sentenced to 30 years on a charge of high treason for passing
secrets to U.S. diplomats in Cuba.

His father claimed Borges, a graduate of a KGB school, gave Washington
the names of 26 Cuban intelligence agents who were about to infiltrate
the United States and European nations, and asked for U.S. help winning
his freedom.

Borges launched a hunger strike in January at Havana's Combinado del
Este prison to demand his release on parole. He has been imprisoned for
14 years, and Cuba's military criminal code allows for parole after one
third of the sentence is completed.

He halted the fast for a few days after prison officials promised to
review his case, and started it again Feb. 10 after he was denied the
early release, his father, Raúl Borges, told El Nuevo Herald on
Wednesday in a phone call from his home in Havana.

Ortega's spokesman, Orlando Marquez, confirmed the cardinal met with
Borges for more than an hour Tuesday but declined comment on what they
discussed. He described Borges as a "Catholic convert" and said the two
men had been in contact "for several years" but gave no other details.

The prison visit was a rare gesture for Ortega, who usually shies away
from sensitive topics although he has intervened with ruler Raúl Castro
to halt harassments of some dissidents and arrange the release of about
115 political prisoners in 2010-2011.

"This indicates that the communications between the hierarchies of the
church and the government are still open," said Havana human rights
activists Elizardo Sánchez Santa Cruz. "It is a visit that raises hopes."

Raúl Borges said he had indeed asked the Catholic Church, as well as
"the international community and many democratic countries" to intercede
on his son's behalf, but learned of the Ortega visit only afterward
through a neighborhood parish priest.

He said his son appeared to be "in a truly Dantesque condition" during
the last prison visit on Saturday. He has lost about 40 pounds, can
barely walk, is short of breath, speaks in short bursts and has pains in
his chest and abdomen.

Borges suffers from uneven heartbeats, very low blood pressure and
arthritis, yet was taken in chains to the visit with his father and
mother, the father added.

Although Borges has been described in reports as the first Cuban
government official ever convicted of spying for the United States, his
case has received little news media attention over the years.

His father said Borges, who studied for five years at the KGB school in
the former Soviet Union, was assigned to counterintelligence work once
back in Cuba and was awarded the title of "principal officer" — a high
rank within the island's intelligence community.

But he later turned against Cuba's communist system "and his decision
was to fight the regime from within the regime's own ranks," the father
added.

He was arrested July 17 of 1998, the same year that five members of
Cuba's "Wasp" spy network in South Florida were swept up by the FBI. One
former Cuban intelligence agent said he had heard an unconfirmed report
several years ago that the two cases could be linked.

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/01/2668195/cuban-jailed-in-havana-for-spying.html