Cuba finds US contractor guilty of espionage over internet aid

A US contractor who was arrested in Cuba in 2009 for allegedly handing out equipment to dissidents was found guilty of crimes against national security by a Havana court in Saturday.

Prosecutors are asking that Alan Gross, 61, be sentenced to 20 years in prison.

A native of Connecticut, Gross worked for a company called Development Alternatives, Inc (DAI), which was a contractor for USAID and had traveled to Cuba to deliver cellphones, radios and computers to the country's small Jewish community. He was arrested in December 2009.

"During the hearing the prosecution submitted evidence of the direct participation of the accused in the introduction and development in Cuba of a subversive plan directed at defeating the Revolution, essentially aimed at the country's youth, university, cultural, religious, feminist and ethnic sectors," Cuba's official newspaper Granma said on Monday.

Washington has demanded that he be released. The Obama administration has warned that bilateral relations between the two nations will not improve if Gross remains in jail.

"We continue to have dialogue with Cuba on a very limited set of issues, including migration, which is in our interest to have that ongoing dialogue," said State Department spokesman P. J. Crowley. "In the dialogue that we've had over the past year, we've raised Mr Gross's case in every instance in every conversation. And we want him home."

Helping Jews

The US government has said Gross, a longtime development worker, was merely providing internet access for Jewish groups in Cuba and this would not be seen as a crime in most nations. But Havana says he is a mercenary comparable to the exiles who entered Cuba during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.

"Gross acknowledged that he was utilized and deceived by the DAI (Development Alternatives Inc.), a conduit for the USAID government agency subordinate to the Department of State, and responsible for political destabilization programs against governments in Latin America and other parts of the world that are not to the liking of the White House," said Granma.

Jewish leaders across the United States have petitioned President Raúl Castro to release him. Gross is a Jewish-American.