One of the so-called "Cuban Five" -- intelligence agents convicted in a 2001 US spy case that made them heroes in Havana -- has been told he will be released from prison, his lawyer told a Miami newspaper today.
Fernando Gonzalez, who is serving a 17-year prison sentence for not registering as a foreign agent and possessing false identity papers, would be the second member of the group to be released.
His lawyer Ira Kurzban told El Nuevo Herald newspaper that the Bureau of Federal Prisons had set Fernandez's release for February 27 for good conduct.
Fernandez was arrested in 1998 along with four other Cuban intelligence agents for infiltrating the Key West Naval Air Station and Cuban exile groups in Miami.
One of the five was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder for passing information to the Cuban government that allegedly led to the 1996 shoot-down of two aircraft belonging to an exile group, Brothers to the Rescue.
Cuba, which has acknowledged they were its agents but says they were spying on exiles, hails the five as national heroes and has made their release a top issue in its relations with Washington.
The first of the five to be released was Rene Gonzalez, who left prison after completing his sentence in October 2011. He has since returned to Cuba.
The others are serving life sentences for passing information to Havana that allegedly led to the shoot-down by Cuban MiGs, which killed four men on board.
Kurzban said once Gonzalez was released from a federal prison in Arizona he would be transferred to an immigration detention facility to await deportation.
"It shouldn't be much time. Everybody wants him out of here," the newspaper quoted Kurzban as saying.
The remaining three are Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labanino and Antonio Guerrero.
