Former US Diplomat Manuel Rocha Convicted of Spying for Cuba

Former US diplomat Manuel Rocha has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for spying for Cuba. Today, April 12, the federal judge rejected the former US ambassador’s agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office by which he accepted the charge of espionage, a task he carried out for forty years. The judge argued the rejection of the agreement because it does not include restitution for the victims, since in the agreement, the Prosecutor’s Office says that the only victim is the United States.

The ex-diplomat was facing fifteen charges for six crimes in a Miami (Florida) court. He was arrested last December 1, after confessing his activities to an FBI agent who pretended to be another Cuban spy. Initially, after the arrest, Rocha denied all the charges, but recently, in a radical change of script, he announced that he would admit to the charges of conspiracy as an agent of a foreign government, something he formally did today before the Miami court hearing the case.

In a hearing that lasted more than three hours, the defendant accepted the charges. “I plead guilty,” he told Judge Beth Bloom, adding that he understood the gravity of his actions. The final sentence imposed is fifteen years in prison and a fine of 500,000. Rocha is a former diplomat born in Bogota (Colombia) 73 years ago and a naturalized US citizen. Initially, the sum of all charges could have carried a total of 60 years in prison.

Charges against Manuel Rocha, the former diplomat

The prosecution’s initial indictment included charges of acting unlawfully on behalf of a foreign government, conspiring to commit such a crime, and defrauding the United States. In addition, he was charged with five counts of wire fraud, three counts of making false statements on a passport application, four counts of using a passport obtained by making false statements, and one count of making false statements and representations, according to the indictment.

In the words of Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, Rocha’s was “one of the most far-reaching and longest-running infiltrations of the US government by a foreign agent.” Manuel Rocha worked for the State Department between 1981 and 2002. He held various posts in U.S. embassies in the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Mexico. Between 1997 and 2002, he was ambassador to Argentina, where he also served as chargé d’affaires. His last diplomatic post was that of ambassador to Bolivia in 2002.

In addition, Rocha also had responsibilities in the US Interests Section in Havana and even served as special advisor to the commander of the Southern Command. In total, he spent four decades in the service of US diplomacy.

The investigation took place during the years 2022 and 2023, when a U.S. agent posed as a Cuban agent, under the alias of Miguel. In recorded meetings with Rocha, held in Spanish, the ex-diplomat described the US as “the enemy” and was in favor of “strengthening the Cuban Revolution”.

Cuban exile accuses him of Oswaldo Paya’s death

Oswaldo Paya was a prominent opponent of the Cuban government who died in a freak traffic accident in 2012 in Cuba. His widow, Ofelia Paya, filed a lawsuit before a Miami court against former diplomat Rocha for “wrongful death”, after accusing him of having shared intelligence that facilitated Cuba’s communist leaders to assassinate Oswaldo, according to the case.

The accident that caused the death of this prominent anti-Castro leader has always been shrouded in suspicion. Paya’s car hit a tree in eastern Cuba, causing the politician’s death. Cuban authorities claimed that it was an incident caused by driver error, but a survivor claimed that the vehicle had been rammed from behind by a red Lada with government plates. This version was supported by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), which stated in a report that Cuban agents had “probably” participated in the accident.

Ofelia Paya’s lawsuit accuses Rocha of being “complicit in the murder,” claiming that the former diplomat “directly assisted Cuban officials by providing them with critical information he obtained through his top-secret security clearance and influential roles. Cuba could not have executed Paya with impunity without the defendant conspiring and providing intelligence and assistance to Cuba’s dictatorship.”

Cuban exile rallies in Miami

It is for all these reasons that, at the time scheduled for Manuel Rocha’s appearance in court, the Cuban opposition in Miami organized a rally in front of the Wilke D. Ferguson Federal Courthouse. The demonstrators, who carried Cuban and US flags, displayed signs demanding “the maximum penalty” for the ex-diplomat, whom they denounced as a “traitor”, among other things.

The demonstrators asserted that Rocha betrayed the US, and also supported the accusations of Ofelia Paya, who accuses him of complicity “in crimes against humanity”. The condemned man admitted that he had worked for the Cuban government since 1981, when he began his diplomatic mission in several Latin American countries.

The sentence did not satisfy the demonstrators, who were expecting a much harsher sentence. The organizer of the rally, influencer Alex Otaola, told local media that the Cuban exile petition to sentence Manuel Rocha to the maximum penalty was fair, and questioned the role of President Biden’s administration. “The US justice system undervalues the danger of the left that stalks society in this country,” Otaola lamented.