Rolando Sarraff Trujillo's father, also called Rolando Sarraff, outside his home in Havana. Photo: AP

Washington: He was, in many ways, a perfect spy - a man so important to Cuba's intelligence apparatus that the information he gave to the CIA paid dividends long after Cuban authorities arrested him and threw him in prison for nearly two decades.

Rolando Sarraff Trujillo has been released from prison and flown out of Cuba, as part of a swap for three Cuban spies imprisoned in the United States that US President Barack Obama announced on Wednesday.

Mr Obama did not give Mr Sarraff's name, but several current and former US officials identified him and discussed some of the information he gave to the CIA while burrowed deep inside Cuba's Directorate of Intelligence.

Rolando Sarraff Trujillo has been released from prison. Photo: AP

Mr Sarraff's story is a chapter in a spy v spy drama between the US and Cuba that played on long after the end of the Cold War and years after Cuba ceased to be a serious threat to the US. The story remains just a sketchy outline, with Mr Sarraff hidden from public view and his work for the CIA still classified.

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Before he was arrested in November 1995, Mr Sarraff worked in the cryptology section of Cuba's Directorate of Intelligence and was an expert on the codes used by Cuban spies in the United States to communicate with Havana. Members of his family said he had studied journalism at the University of Havana and had the rank of first lieutenant at the intelligence directorate.

It is not clear when Mr Sarraff, 51, began working for the CIA. Chris Simmons, who was the chief of a Cuban counterintelligence unit for the Defence Intelligence Agency from 1996 to 2004, said he worked with another man - Jose Cohen, one of Mr Sarraff's childhood friends - to pass encryption information to the CIA that led to the arrest of a number of Cuban agents operating in the United States.

After Mr Sarraff helped the US crack the codes, the FBI was able to arrest Cuban spies years after Mr Sarraff was discovered and put in prison in Cuba, Mr Simmons said.

Cuban authoritiesput Mr Sarraff on trial for espionage, revealing state secrets and other acts against state security. One senior US official said the Cubans learned of his plans to defect when he was on assignment in a third country and recalled him to Cuba and put him in jail.

Members of Mr Sarraff's family said he went to work one day in 1995 and never came home. Cuban officials told the family for more than a week that Mr Sarraff was on a job in the country's interior and would be back soon.

He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Mr Simmons said he believed the reason Mr Sarraff was not executed was because his parents were officials in the Cuban government.

"He has always maintained his innocence," his sister, Vilma Sarraff, said from Spain.

Mr Cohen escaped Cuba on a raft and was sentenced to death in absentia. He lives in Miami and works as an Amway salesman. He said neither he nor Mr Sarraff ever sold information.

"What I did I did because I admired the values of this country, and because what was happening in Cuba was a farce," he said.

In his speech Wednesday, Mr Obama referred to Mr Sarraff as one of the most important intelligence agents the United States has ever had in Cuba.

But Ms Sarraff said if her brother had collaborated with US intelligence agencies to help snare Cuban agents living in the US, he never discussed it with his family.

"If what they are saying is true, fine. He paid that debt with 20 years in prison," she said.

Her brother was in solitary confinement for 18 years, she said. An avid painter and poet, he was not permitted any painting supplies or other distractions. He was also denied parole.

Her brother had been calling his family regularly from prison, but that they had not heard from him in several days, she said. Her family had been told Mr Sarraff had been released from prison, but had not heard directly that he was part of a prisoner exchange.

"They did not say where they had taken him," she said, becoming irate. "How is it possible that they take my brother out of the country without telling his parents? My parents are at the point where my father is likely to have a heart attack."

Speaking from Havana, Mr Sarraff's father, also named Rolando, said: "This is not a moment of happiness, it's panic."

As Mr Sarraff's family and friends wait to hear from him, his former partner in espionage said Mr Sarraff gave up his freedom for a cause he believed in.

"Here's what I can tell you about Roly - he is a person who loves liberty. He was jailed unjustly," Mr Cohen said. "He sacrificed his life. When he gets here, he will tell his story."

New York Times