A Cuban Slap on the Wrist: The Alan Gross Case

The Obama Administration has in recent months made efforts to improve relations with Cuba contingent upon the release of Alan P. Gross. A subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Gross was arrested in December 2009 for making the Internet available to members of Cuba’s minuscule Jewish community. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison in March 2011. A couple of weeks ago, Cuba’s highest tribunal listened to an appeal of his conviction and a plea for release.

In Cuba, free circulation of ideas is forbidden. The State defines truth, not the individual. Free exchanges of information are viewed as subversive and undermining the authority of the State. A combination of siege mentality and decades-old thought control keep the island locked in the grip of the regime’s repressive informational stranglehold.

A window for potential clemency in the Gross case opened when Cuba’s highest court took up the Gross case. The court could have voided Gross’s 15-year sentence. Expectations were not high. Cuba is a country where justice is always political, and the judiciary looks over its shoulder for cues from the political hierarchy.

Fidel and Raul Castro could have used the moment to signal a modest change of heart. Or, as The Washington Post notes, they could have demonstrated that Cuba is “remotely interested in better relations with Washington.” They did not. Cuban paranoia prevailed. The court rejected Gross’ appeal. The Castro brothers opted to continue to punish Gross—now America’s most prominent political prisoner—throwing it in the face of the Obama Administration and the United States.

Cuba’s aging dictatorship, slumping economy, scattershot economic reforms and resort to acts of repression constitute a desperate spectacle. Cuba has put out the welcome mat for cancer-stricken Hugo Chávez. His health crisis looms large as Venezuela provides an indispensable lifeline of support to the regime. The role U.S. travel and remittances play in propping up the economy is taken as a given.

In the twilight of its tyranny, the Castro regime is determined to show it can still play hardball with the life and liberty of a single American citizen and show that the Obama Administration is unable to do little more than bluster.

Former diplomat and democracy expert Elliott Abrams is right: The next step for the Administration to take is to use diplomatic channels to inform the Castro brothers that unless their “clemency” is exercised, the relaxation of travel restrictions will be reversed and greater pressure will be brought on the government of Cuba.

Ray Walser

Source: The Foundry 

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Chilean businessman, ex-minister get long-term sentences

Max Marambio (l) and Castro in the "friendship" times.

Ending a one-year trial, a provincial court in Havana sentenced a former food industry minister and a Chilean investor to long prison terms.

A report in Granma said ex Food Industry Minister Alejandro Francisco Roca Iglesias must serve 15 years, after the court convicted him in March of “repeated bribery” and “acts to harm economic activity,” while Max Marambio, who was sentenced in absence, must serve 20 years on convictions of bribery, fraud and falsification.

In both cases, the court followed the guidance of prosecutors.

Marambio, via his Twitter account from Chile, denounced the sentencing as “pure political persecution” and challenged the Cuban government to ask a Chilean court for his extradition. “They never sent anything,” he wrote.

He was represented by a court-appointed defender. The political insider-turned-businessman and long-time resident of Cuba has not returned to the island since fall 2009. He filed legal proceedings against Cuba before the court of arbitration of the Paris-based International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) in October 2010.

The Havana court’s ruling can be appealed before the Superior Court within 10 days.

Neither did the Granma article provide any details of the allegations, nor has there been any other official information as to what the pair’s alleged crimes actually consisted of.

“The charges of the prosecution were duly proven, and [the court] took into account that the crimes committed are of particular seriousness, requiring an energetic response for punishment that corresponds to the many damages to the national economy caused by the accused, to the detriment of the ethical behavior of various officials and subordinated workers,” Granma said, without explaining details.

Marambio claims part of the accusations stem from his paying generous benefits to Cuban employees. According to Chilean press reports, Roca is accused of making considerable bank deposits abroad from illicit commissions. A son of Roca’s works for Marambio in Chile.

The sentencing puts an end to a two-year investigation and trial that prompted broad media coverage in Chile. It comes on the heels of several cases of destitution and investigation against state company executives, most recently the imprisonment of a long-term executive at cigar company Habanos S.A. on corruption charges.

Roca Iglesias.

Roca Iglesias, 75, was minister of food industries from 1976 to March 2009. He lost his minister job the same time as Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque and Vice President Carlos Lage.

Marambio, 63, made it into Cuba’s inner circles of power under Fidel Castro. The former student leader in Chile and body guard of President Salvador Allende fled to Cuba after the 1973 coup, where he became a member of Cuba’s special forces, and founding chief executive of the CIMEX holding — today Cuba’s largest business conglomerate. In the 1990s, he used his close relationship with the Cuban government to build a thriving business, the Havana-based Alimentos Río Zaza joint venture. Early last year, the government shut down Río Zaza, which produced and sold processed food products in Cuba to the tune of $100 million a year, and took back Marambio’s house in Havana.

As of October, two Río Zaza executives were imprisoned in relation to the investigation, according to Marambio; the government hasn’t released any information about related cases.

Source: Cuba Standard

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Mind control keeps Cubans in line

Cyber cafe in Havana, Cuba.

The 15-year verdict handed down by a Cuban "court" against U.S. citizen Alan Gross is the deeply unjust result of events that bear no relationship to due process in an impartial legal system. Let's call this cynical manoeuvre what it really is -- blackmail.

The 61-year-old Gross is not a criminal of any sort. He's a chess piece manipulated by the Cuban regime in the relentless war against its own people. The Castro brothers want to stop ordinary Cubans from obtaining the slightest bit of information from the outside world from any independent source. Punishing this envoy from a private U.S. company financed by a grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development is a convenient way to deter further efforts to circumvent Cuba's extensive system of communications surveillance.

Satellite phones are increasingly common instruments used to make calls around the world. But not in the Orwellian world run by Fidel and Raul Castro and their paranoid minions. In Cuba, a satellite phone such as the one Gross is accused of carrying for use by the island's tiny and impoverished Jewish community is deemed a dangerous weapon in an alleged "cyber war" being waged by the U.S. government to bolster a web of spies plotting to bring down the government.

In most countries, a violation of customs regulations might result in a stiff fine and possible expulsion from the country. In Cuba, where the state controls all information outlets, violations that threaten the state's hegemony are seen as crimes that endanger the security of the state.

The real target of this mock-judicial charade is the "pro-democracy" funding from USAID designed to promote Cuba's budding civil society movement. People who can think for themselves, talk to each other and learn from each other without government intrusion represent a danger to the state's tyrannical masters, which practice various forms of mind control designed to snuff out any kind of independent action.

At a minimum, the punitive actions against Gross should throw a splash of cold water on what some call the warming in relations between Washington and Havana. He should be released unconditionally and immediately. As long as Alan Gross remains in jail, there can be no improvement in U.S.-Cuba relations.

President Obama came to office saying his administration would respond positively to an unclenched fist from previously hostile governments. We doubt the mistreatment of Alan Gross by the Cuban government is what he had in mind as an appropriate response.

From: Winnipeg Free Press

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A year later, American consultant languishes in Cuban jail

Alan Gross

MIAMI -- Alan Gross has dropped 90 pounds from his 250-pound frame, is losing feeling in his right foot and spent most of his summer watching Cuban baseball on TV.

The American arrested a year ago for illegally bringing Internet to Jewish groups in Cuba kills time with musical jam sessions with his jailers and by mapping out an economic recovery plan for the country that has held him without charges.

Gross, 61, is an economic consultant and figures Cuba could use his help.

"He really means it - he would like to work on that," Gross' wife Judy told The Miami Herald. "I would describe him as an idealist, someone who has worked with kids, adolescents and the disadvantaged in developing countries and has never lost his excitement for that."

Judy Gross has other plans for her husband of four decades - like getting him home. Her husband's detention and the loss of 70 percent of her household income forced the psychotherapist to sell her home of 22 years. She now lives in a one-bedroom apartment in Washington, D.C., where she spends her evenings writing letters to the likes of Cuban leader Raul Castro and worrying about her 26-year-old daughter, who was recently diagnosed with breast cancer.

Despite the public appeals for his freedom and letters to Castro - Gross and his mother wrote him, too - Friday will mark exactly a year since the world-traveling development worker found himself trapped in a diplomatic conflict between two nations.

The Cuban government recently rejected the Gross family's plea for a humanitarian release, and insisted that the case is moving forward like any other.

"It remains in the same situation. It still hasn't concluded. It's still being worked and when it finishes, the answer will be given," Maj. Gen. Dario Delgado Cura said at a news conference in Cuba. "This adheres to Cuban law. There's no problem. Everything moves ahead as was foreseen.

"It's a normal case."

Some have suggested that the Cuban government is holding out to pressure the United States to release five intelligence agents jailed in federal prison, a swap Judy Gross considers "apples and oranges."

"They were arrested and convicted for spying," she said. "Alan is a hostage."

Gross has emerged as a pawn between two nations that severed diplomatic ties decades ago. His arrest appears to have stalled any momentum that may have existed for Havana and Washington to begin building bridges. Experts say Gross now serves as a symbol of both a nation that lacks the rule of law, and another's misguided efforts at promoting democracy.

Gross was arrested Dec. 3 at his Havana hotel on the tail end of a weeklong trip. A consultant, he had been hired by Bethesda-based Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI) to help bring the Internet to Jewish organizations. But Gross' five trips to Cuba were funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development's Cuba program, whose mission is to help foster democracy on an island ruled by the same pair of communist brothers since 1959.

Or as Cuba sees it: counter-revolutionary regime change.

"I find it frustrating that Cuba has not charged Alan Gross but even more frustrating that the U.S. has not taken the steps which could have led to his release," said John McAuliff, who runs a foundation that helped normalize relations with Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. "The fundamental problem is mutual respect and sovereignty."

McAuliff is also an anti-embargo activist in New York who follows the case closely. "The U.S. politically and culturally presumes it has the right to intervene in other countries for their own good," he said, "and to support our values whenever we can get away with it."

The Cuban government has accused Gross of smuggling illegal satellite equipment and being a spy. Whatever gear he was caught with - U.S. officials have said it was satellite gear - was cleared by Cuban customs.

Gross was interrogated daily, sometimes twice, for the first six months of his detention, Judy Gross said.

"He did nothing wrong," she said. "He is a great person who may have been a bit naive. He loves the Cuban people and does not want to hurt the Cuban people."

Gross has been assigned a Cuban attorney in Havana who visits him weekly and brings him candy or cake. She said that while the U.S. State Department has been supportive, the White House has yet to reach out to her.

The Cubans are trying to use Gross as a "pawn" in bilateral relations, said a U.S. official who discussed the case on the condition of anonymity, citing government policy.

"We are not going to play that game."

In September, Assistant Secretary of State Arturo Valenzuela met with Cuban officials during the opening of United Nations General Assembly to push for Gross' release, said Philip Crowley, State Department spokesman.

"Unfortunately, that has not yet happened," Crowley told reporters, later adding that "we would hope that it would happen today, but that's up to the Cuban government."

DAI officials declined to speak about Gross' arrest.
"DAI is profoundly disappointed by Alan's continued detention," DAI's President and CEO James Boomgard said in a statement. "As the anniversary of his detention approaches, our thoughts are with Alan, his wife Judy, and their two daughters, and our hope is that this loving husband and father may be swiftly reunited with his family."

Gross had worked in at least 50 different countries, largely in the Middle East and Africa, on projects such as working with Palestinian dairy farmers and West Bank cross-border issues. He began traveling for work 25 years ago and fell in love with the work, Judy Gross said.

Gross was allowed to visit her husband for three days in July. She saw him at the military hospital where he is now being held.

"I prepared myself for the worst, but I still wasn't prepared," she said. "He looked like a 70-year-old man all hunched over. He looked pale, his cheeks were sunken in; his posture was humped over. He was dragging one of his feet. That was pretty shocking."

While he has generally been treated "fairly," Judy Gross said her husband developed a disk problem that is causing paralysis in one leg. He had ulcers, gout and lost 90 pounds. When he was held in a cell, he stayed in shape by walking around and around and around in circles.

"His letters vary from sounding hopeless, anxious and depressed to very humorous," she said. "I'm not sure what changes his mood."

He has nicknamed two of his guards "Cheech and Chong."

In his last correspondence, he said he had just seen the moon for the second time in a year.

"My plan is to see him again," Judy Gross said, "when I go there to bring him home."

By FRANCES ROBLES

From:  Kentucky.com

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Cuba tries armed men tied to US anti-Castro group

Santa Clara streets

Three armed men who were intercepted by Cuban border guards in 2001 and have been awaiting trial since then on charges they planned acts of sabotage went to court behind closed-doors Friday, according to a veteran human rights activist.
Elizardo Sanchez, head of the Cuban Commission on Human Rights and National Reconciliation, said that during a roughly eight-hour hearing in the central city of Santa Clara prosecutors presented their case against the three Cuban-born exiles: Ihosvani Suris de la Torre, Santiago Padron Quintero and Maximo Pradera Valdes, also known as Maximo Robaina.
Authorities are seeking 30-year prison sentences for Padron and Pradera, and life behind bars for Suris. A judge will now rule on their guilt and determine an appropriate sentence for each — though it was not clear when that decision would come.
"The trial is ready for sentencing," Sanchez said by phone Friday night. He said the three men were transferred from a maximum-security prison in Havana to Santa Clara for their day in court.
Island border agents first intercepted the men on the northern coast of Villa Clara province, of which Santa Clara is the capital. After exchanging gunfire with Cuban authorities, the three fled to Jutia Key Island, where they were arrested April 26, 2001.
They were armed with four AK-47 assault rifles, an M-3 rifle, three Makarov pistols and night goggles, all purchased openly at stores in Miami, according to evidence Cuban prosecutors detailed on state television in the months following the arrests.
In Miami, Andres Nazario Sargen, leader of anti-Castro paramilitary group Alpha 66, said in 2001 that Suris and Robaina were active members of the group but went to Cuba independently. He said back then that Padron had been a member years ago, but had not been active lately.
The three have long featured prominently in a video shown several times a week on Cuban state television, where the voice of Suris is apparently heard, confessing that the group arrived in Cuba to commit acts of violence. That same presentation includes a bugged phone conversation between Suris and a man identified as a leader of the anti-Castro, Cuban-American community, detailing a plan to detonate an explosive inside the Tropicana, Havana's best-known cabaret.
Cuban authorities did not comment on Friday's proceedings, and rarely discuss such matters publicly.
Sanchez's commission is not recognized by Cuba's communist government, but largely allowed to operate.
Sanchez said he did not know exactly why it took eight years for the three to go to court, but that he suspected it was no coincidence that authorities held a trial a day after the U.S. State Department again included Cuba on its list of state sponsors of terrorism. Cuba has bristled at that charge, which Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez dismissed as "two-faced and hypocritical."

WILL WEISSERT (AP)

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