US 'optimistic' Cuba might release US citizen from prison

Two US senators on Tuesday expressed optimism that Cuba would free a US government contractor in prison.

Republican Jeff Flake of Arizona and Democrat Tom Udall of New Mexico said they had met with Alan Gross at a hospital prison in Havana for two hours.

Alan Gross, 65, (shown in picture above from 2012) was arrested in December 2009 while working setting up Internet cables as a subcontractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Cuba views the activities as illegal, as the Internet equipment and service had been meant for Cuban groups promoting political change, which the government in Havana considers subversive.

He was put on trial and received a sentence of 15 years in prison.

Flake told reporters Tuesday, "I do feel we are closer" to Gross' release. "One, because of what Alan Gross has said himself. This is going to end one way or another. We've gone on five years and I think any benefit that the Cuban government may have seen [from holding him] has to have evaporated by now."

According to Gross' wife and lawyer, he has threatened not to spend his next birthday - in May - in prison, implying he would take his life if need be.

Gross is said to be in poor health, having lost over 100 lbs during his five years of incarceration, with severe hip pain and loss of sight in one eye.

Neither of the senators gave an indication that the US government and Cuba were any closer to reaching a deal on Gross, however. The US has repeatedly called on Havana to release Gross, but Cuba wants to see the release of three Cuban nationals currently in US prisons for espionage as well.

Both senators have called for an improvement in US-Cuba relations and an end or revisions to the 52-year economic embargo against the Communist country.

Covert US dissent programs in question

The senators' optimism over the release of Gross came a day after the US State Department announced it was reviewing some of its secretive, political, democracy promotion programs in hostile countries, i.e. ones where such programs are not welcomed.

That announcement followed an investigation by the Associated Press (AP) this year into work by USAID, which, among other things, "established a Twitter-like service in Cuba [ZunZuneo] and secretly sought to recruit a new generation of dissidents there while hiding ties to the US government." An August investigation by AP also found that the agency had sent Latin youth to Cuba disguised as tourists to "scout for people they could turn into activists" on the island.

The proposed policy for USAID, according to AP, would prohibit the agency from spending money on democracy programs in countries that reject the agency's assistance and where it would have to go to "excessive lengths to protect program beneficiaries and participants."

Some of the agency's high-risk democracy efforts would be shifted to other agencies. The changes would, for example, prevent USAID from running such programs as ZunZuneo, which sought to encourage dissent and political change and in the end had 40,000 followers who had no idea it was a US government program, as funding for the site had been channeled through the Cayman Islands.

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki, however, did not elaborate on any new plans for USAID, saying it would be "premature."

"We continue to believe we need to find creative ways to promote positive change in Cuba, but beyond that, we're still assessing what any change or what any impact would be," she said.

USAID in a statement said it would continue to carry out democracy initiatives in "politically restrictive environments," AP reported. But the Obama administration failed to answer the question how the agency's pro-democracy work could be continued in Cuba if it was illegal there.

sb/lw (AP, Reuters)