Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Alan Gross Calls for Closer U.S. Ties With Cuba

Alan Gross, who was imprisoned for five years in Cuba for his work connecting its Jewish community to the Internet, marked the one-year anniversary of his release pledging to advance warmer U.S.-Cuba ties.

In a statement issued Wednesday, Gross thanked those who supported him while in prison and announced he will soon be a grandfather for the first time.

“I am also gratified to witness a newfound diplomatic relationship between Cuba and the United States,” said Gross, 66, who was a subcontractor for the U.S. government when he was arrested in 2009 and later sentenced to 15 years for crimes against the state.

“I hope this new – and historic – relationship continues to evolve in a positive way. While I served as an involuntary catalyst for this change, I hope now to help foster continued good relations between our countries and our citizens.”

Gross, a Jewish-American from Potomac, Maryland, was released as part of a complicated deal that involved the release in Cuba of an unnamed American spy and in the United States of three imprisoned members of a spy ring.

President Barack Obama also used the exchange to launch renewed ties with Cuba that were frozen for over 50 years.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.