US says no spy swapping with Cuba

WASHINGTON, CMC, APRIL 21, CMC – The Obama administration says it will not swap five Cuban spies held in the US for American Alan Gross, who is serving a 15-year jail sentence in Cuba.



Gross and his family have been pushing to win his release as a “humanitarian gesture.”



“They were and have been attempting to trade Alan Gross for the five spies that are in prison here in the U.S., and we’ve refused to do that because there’s no equivalency,” US Secretary of State John Kerry testified before the US House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee.



“Alan Gross is wrongly imprisoned, and we’re not going to trade as if it’s spy for spy,” Kerry added in response to a question from Congressman Albio Sires, a Cuban-American Democrat from New Jersey.



Kerry, however, said that the US is “trying to find whether there is a humanitarian capacity or not” in Cuba to free Gross, a subcontractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID).



Without giving details , Kerry, a former chairman of the US Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said he tried to help Gross before he became secretary of state in February.



Recently, US Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, visited Cuba, met with Gross, “and talked to the government.”



Observers say Gross’ imprisonment in Havana since December 3, 2009 has become the key stumbling block in efforts to improve US-Cuba relations.



The 63-year-old Maryland man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for delivering communications equipment, paid for by USAID’s pro-democracy programs, which Cuba has outlawed, saying they are part of a “subversive” attempt to topple the government.



The equipment, would have given recipients access to the Internet without passing through government censors.



The alleged five Cubans spies were convicted in a US federal trial in Miami in 2001.