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Cuba whines about arrested spies
 Cuban Parliament Speaker Ricardo Alarcon said Monday that this month's jailing in the U.S. of two Florida academics on charges they spied for Cuba for three decades was "strange" and "worrisome."
| Worrisome if you're a Cuban spy, that is. |
In the government's first public reaction to the case, Alarcon questioned the timing of the married couple's arrests, which came as a U.S. federal appeals court in Atlanta prepared to rehear arguments in the case of five other Cubans accused of being secret agents of the Cuban government.
"This story comes across as strange and very worrisome because the FBI has supposedly known since June what they said about their activities," Alarcon told journalists of Carlos Alvarez, 61, and his 55-year-old wife, Elsa. "So why come out with this case now? Obviously it has to do with something that goes beyond these two people," Alarcon said.
"They are trying to create an environment of McCarthyism to influence the Atlanta appeals court," Alarcon said of the newest arrests.
| Perhaps one of your agents is singing? There's five of them, can't be sure which one it is. |
The husband and wife both hold positions at Florida International University and could get up to 10 years in prison if convicted of failing to register as agents of a foreign power. A U.S. attorney said Alvarez had spied for Cuba since 1977 and his wife since 1982, working independently at first and later together.
Posted by: Steve White 2006-01-17 |
