His release from a Cuban prison has been as cloak-and-dagger as his spying career.

Not even the family of Rolando Sarraff Trujillo appears to know what has happened to the Cuban man believed by some to be the US informant secretly freed in a prisoner swap between Cuba and the United States. In contrast to the televised homecoming of former US aid worker Alan Gross, the US and Cuba have declined to disclose the identity of the freed spy. "He's probably in some very quiet place being debriefed," a former senior US intelligence official said. "They want to know exactly what happened."