For two decades, the parents of a Cuban man convicted of spying for the US believed in his innocence.
Now that all signs suggest that he was a double agent working for Washington, they say they can only wish him a happy future.
Rolando Sarraff was sentenced to 25 years for collaborating with the US while he worked for Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence, helping the US crack codes that exposed suspected Cuban spies working in the US, according to former US intelligence officials who knew of his case.
Sarraff, 51, is widely believed to be the spy who US President Barack Obama spoke of last week when he announced an end to five decades of enmity with Cuba and a prisoner swap that accompanied it.
Obama said his “sacrifice has been known to only a few,” and praised him for providing information that led to several Cuban spies in the US, including the three for whom he was swapped.
Several current and former US officials identified that spy as Sarraff, the New York Times has reported.
His parents said that they are desperate to hear from their son, as they have not spoken with him since before Obama’s announcement on Dec. 17.
“I always thought that [he was innocent], but well, I don’t have any information,” his father, also called Rolando Sarraff, said on Friday from the front door of the couple’s simple apartment in an upscale neighborhood of western Havana.
“Look, the Cuban government hasn’t said anything and neither has Obama, so there is an agreement between the two governments not to say anything, I guess,” the 79-year-old father said. “The important thing is that my son be well.”
Neither Washington nor Havana have said where the younger Sarraff has been since his prison release.
For years, Sarraff’s parents regularly spoke with him on the telephone and visited him in prison, and they believed their son’s claim that he was innocent.
A family blog described him as unjustly imprisoned.
Then, earlier this month, he was apparently taken from prison with no explanation from the Cuban or US governments.
His parents said that they last saw him two days before the joint announcement by Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro that the nations would restore diplomatic ties and swap prisoners.
When they called their son the following day, they were told that he was no longer available.
If the US negotiated Sarraff’s release, it would confirm that he was a “turncoat.” It was unknown whether Sarraff had not contacted his family because officials told him not to, or for his own reasons.
“Our longing is that he be happy and that he’s well and that he has a plan for his future, because no prisoner can have a plan for his future,” his mother, 76-year-old Odesa Trujillo, said on Friday. “He has to move forward.”
The parents, both retired journalists who live with health problems, declined to talk about how they felt about their son’s case, but his mother defended him as a good person.
“He’s a great son, a great friend, a great everything — and if one day you get to speak with him, I’m sure that you will see how cultured he is,” she said.
In the prisoner exchange, Obama commuted the sentences of three Cuban intelligence agents, while Cuba released the spy and US aid contractor Alan Gross.
Cuba also committed to freeing 53 people that the US government considers political prisoners, although their identities remain a mystery.
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