HAVANA– The regime in Cuba released Ernesto Borges on Thursday in Havana, former chapter of the Ministry of Interior, after serving 27 years in prison for “espionage attempt” in favor of the United States, the former official himself reported.
Borges was a counter -signing analyst at the Ministry and was sentenced to 30 years in prison by a military court in 1999 because he tried to provide classified information to US diplomats in Havana.
“I feel very excited, cheerful, well of encouragement, although I have to operate in cataract in both eyes,” said Borges, 59, in a video call with the AFP.
“The meeting with the family has been very intense,” he acknowledged.
During the almost three decades of imprisonment, he made fasts and other protests to demand his release. “They condemned me to 30 years, as if it were a consummate crime,” he lamented.
In 2012, Borges received the visit of the then Cuban cardinal Jaime Ortega in the East Combined, the main prison of the island. He says he does not regret what he did because he ensures that opposing the Cuban regime “was not a decision of a day.”
“I would do it again”
“At that time I thought it was the best decision to make and would do the same again,” he said.
He recalled that he handled “much secret information” when he was arrested at the end of 1998, and that of the 27 years in jail he spent “11 in an isolation regime, without a TV and without the right to conjugal pavilion.”
“It has been a great test to see the family deteriorate, the family will die,” concluded Borges, who thinks “to leave Cuba as soon as he can” and settle in the United States.
