Cuba sentences US contractor to 15 years

The decision by a panel of judges followed a two-day trial last week in which Cuban prosecutors said Gross was involved in a U.S.-funded “subversive project” to “topple the Revolution.”

U.S. President Barack Obama's administration reacted angrily to the sentencing, condemning it as an “injustice.” The case was the latest flare-up in U.S.-Cuba relations that have been sour since a 1959 revolution put Fidel Castro in power.

Gross, 61, was convicted of “acts against the independence and territorial integrity of the state” for working to set up clandestine Internet networks for Cuba dissidents using “sophisticated” communications technology.

Prosecutors sought a 20-year sentence for the longtime development worker, who has been jailed since his arrest in Havana on Dec. 3, 2009. U.S. officials had contended from the beginning that Gross was only setting up Internet access for the island's small Jewish community.

“Today's sentencing adds another injustice to Alan Gross's ordeal. He has already spent too many days in detention and should not spend one more,” White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said in a statement.

“We urge the immediate release of Mr. Gross so that he can return home to his wife and family,” Vietor said.

Gloria Berbena, spokeswoman at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, said Gross was “in Cuba helping average Cubans connect with the rest of the world. It is appalling that the Cuban government seeks to criminalize what most of the world deems normal, in this case access to information and technology.”

Gross' attorney, Peter Kahn, said the Gross family was “devastated by the verdict and harsh sentence.”

“Alan and his family have paid an enormous personal price in the long-standing political feud between Cuba and the United States. We will continue to work with Alan's Cuban attorney in exploring any and all options available to him, including the possibility of an appeal,” he said in a statement.

Few details of the trial have been released.

DAI had a contract from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to conduct projects aimed at promoting political change on the Caribbean island.

Call for Pressure on Havana

Gross' detention brought to a halt a mild warming in U.S.-Cuba relations after Obama took office, and the United States has said it will not undertake any more initiatives with the Caribbean island until Gross is free.

U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Florida Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called the sentencing “a shameless act by a desperate regime.”

“The U.S. and all responsible nations must demand not only the release of Mr. Gross, but of all those wrongly imprisoned in Castro's dungeons. We must increase pressure on the regime until the basic rights, freedoms, and dignities of the Cuban people are respected,” Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement.

Cuban prosecutors said Gross targeted young people, universities, religious groups, women's groups, racial groups and cultural types. He worked in Cuba on a tourist visa under the controversial USAID program.

Such programs have been criticized in the United States for doing little more than provoking the Cuban government.

Cuba views the activities as part of longstanding U.S. efforts to subvert the government and has made them illegal.

Some observers say a political solution will be reached to allow Gross to go free soon, but others say Cuba has little interest in improving relations with the United States, which has imposed a trade embargo against the island since 1962.

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