The ruler Miguel Díaz-Canel published a message on Facebook this Tuesday congratulating Fernando González Llort on his 63rd birthday, in which he refers to him as "Hero of the Republic of Cuba" and celebrates "his life dedicated to the Revolution, now from the trench of the beloved ICAP."
The publication from the Cuban leader comes at a time of heightened bilateral tension: the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP), which González Llort has led since 2017, was sanctioned by Washington on June 4 through Executive Order 14404, which added it to the Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the Department of the Treasury, accusing it of supporting Cuban intelligence and counterintelligence activities.
By publicly praising González Llort and his management of the ICAP, Díaz-Canel explicitly supports an official and an institution facing U.S. sanctions, in a gesture that the regime presents as a source of national pride but which deepens Havana's isolation from Washington.
González Llort, born in Havana on August 18, 1963, is one of the so-called "Cuban Five", a group of Cuban intelligence agents convicted in Miami for espionage related to the Wasp Network, a network that infiltrated Cuban exile organizations and U.S. military bases.
He was sentenced in December 2001 to 19 years in prison, a sentence that was subsequently reduced to 17 years and nine months. He served approximately 15 years in federal prison before being released and deported to Cuba on February 27, 2014, from the Safford penitentiary in Arizona.
The U.S. State Department describes him in its official 2026 documents as a "convicted Cuban spy" who served 15 years in prison on American soil.
Upon his return to the Island, the regime integrated him into the institutional apparatus: first as vice president of the ICAP and then, in March 2017, as its president. The ICAP was founded on December 30, 1960, by Fidel Castro and is the official Cuban institution for relations with foreign solidarity organizations.
The sanctions in June triggered a public confrontation between González Llort and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The convicted spy challenged Rubio on Facebook in July, calling the accusations against ICAP "unfounded lies" and asserting that the U.S. official "deliberately lies."
The ICAP, for its part, demanded that Washington remove it from the sanctions list, denying being a "spy agency." The measures against the institution were adopted alongside others aimed at the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), the Ministry of Revolutionary Armed Forces (MINFAR), and several Cuban companies.
In his post this Tuesday, Díaz-Canel wrote: "Our embrace to the Hero of the Republic of Cuba, Fernando González Llort, who is celebrating his birthday today. His life dedicated to the Revolution, now from the trench of the beloved ICAP, is a source of pride for Cubans. Congratulations!"
González Llort, for his part, had responded to the sanctions with a phrase that the regime has turned into a slogan: "Solidarity cannot be blocked."
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