Havana, November 13 (RHC) –- Two U.S. Senators met on Tuesday morning with Alan Gross, a U.S. contractor held in Cuba for five years on charges of subversive actions against the government in Havana.
According to CBS News, Senator Jeff Flake and Tom Udall met with Gross for two hours. They said the meeting was just one reason for their visit and they declined to mention what they had talked about.
The senators said they have no information on Gross’ possible release. He has been held in a Cuban prison for five years already and still has ten years remaining on his sentence.
In 2009, Gross went to Cuba posing as a tourist. But that was a front for fulfilling a $600,000 contract to smuggle communications equipment into the island. The plan was to set up Internet hot spots as part of a U.S. government-funded program.
Cuba has offered to exchange him for the three members of the Cuban Five that remain imprisoned in the U.S., but so far, Washington has shown no interest in the deal. The possibility of a swap deal was also mentioned by a recent editorial in The New York Times, while other individuals have stressed the positiveness of such a move.
Among them is Judy Gross, wife of Alan Gross, who said she is heartened by the U.S. government’s exchange of Taliban prisoners for U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl not so long ago.
She said: “My thought is if they can do that, if they can follow through with something that complicated, surely they can figure out something they can do to get Alan home.”