USA Wants Cuba to Release Alan Gross on Its Terms

USA Wants Cuba to Release Alan Gross on Its Terms
December 3, 2014

HAVANA TIMES — The US government has once again asked Cuba to
"immediately" release the US agent Alan Gross, coinciding with the fifth
anniversary of his detention in Havana.

"His release remains a top priority for the United States," US State
Department spokesperson Marie Harf told a press conference.

The spokeswoman said that the imprisonment of Gross "represents a
significant impediment to a more constructive bilateral relationship"
between Washington and Havana.

Gross, 65, was arrested on December 3, 2009 in Havana after bringing to
the island sophisticated telecommunications equipment prohibited by the
Cuban authorities. A court later sentenced him to 15 years in prison for
promoting "acts against the integrity" of the state.

The Maryland resident was working as a highly paid subcontractor for the
US development agency USAID. He denies the charges and says he was only
on a humanitarian mission to provide Internet access to the small Jewish
community in Cuba. He had made several previous trips to the island.
(See the real mission of Alan Gross in Cuba).

The government of Raul Castro has repeatedly expressed its willingness
to consider a prisoner exchange with Washington. Havana would release
Gross in exchange for three Cubans (of the Cuban Five) who have already
spent more than 16 years in prison for espionage in the United States.

The Cuban Five were convicted in 2001 by a federal court in Miami for
espionage. Two of them were already released and three remain in prison.

The five agents were members of the "Wasp Network", a clandestine
network of Cuban intelligence in the United States. The Castro
government maintains that their mission was to prevent attacks on the
island by radical Cuban exiles settled mainly in Florida.

So far, Washington has given no sign that it is willing to make the
swap, something also advocated in November in a New York Times editorial.

The US government sees no equivalence between the two cases, noting that
the three Cubans imprisoned in the United States are convicted of
espionage, while Gross was only an aid worker who wanted to bring
internet to the island, said Monday a State Department source who
requested anonymity.

Source: USA Wants Cuba to Release Alan Gross on Its Terms - Havana
Times.org - http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=107707