[Breaking News Update 11:02 a.m. ET]
The plane carrying Alan Gross from Cuba is expected to land at about 11 a.m. ET at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, according to Jill Zuckman, spokeswoman for Gross’ legal team. Three lawmakers and his wife flew to Cuba thiis morning on a U.S. government plane to pick him up. The flight landed at 8 a.m. at a Cuban military base, At 8:45 a.m., when the pilot announced they had left Cuban airspace, Gross stood up and took a deep breath, Zuckman said. Then he called his two daughters and his first words were: “I’m free.”
[Breaking News Update 10:56 a.m. ET]
Three members of Congress — Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Maryland, and Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont — are on the plane taking Alan Gross back to the United States, said Jill Zuckman, spokeswoman for Gross’ attorneys. Gross’ wife, Judy, also is on the plane, Zuckman said. Van Hollen, who is Gross’ congressman, Flake and Leahy were part of a U.S. congressional delegation that met with Cuban President Raul Castro to discuss Gross’ case last year.
[Previous story published at 10:50 a.m. ET]
He spent more than 25 years traveling the world, helping people in more than 50 countries. But for the past five, Alan Gross was stuck in a Cuban prison, losing his hope, health and more than 100 pounds.
A landmark deal announced Wednesday between the United States and Cuba included his release.
Attorneys for Gross, 65, say he wants a glass of good scotch and plans to smoke a nice cigar — a habit he’s picked up while in prison.
Gross was a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, working to bring the Internet to Cuba’s small Jewish community despite Cuban government restrictions on Internet access, the U.S. State Department said.
But Fulton Armstrong, a former senior adviser to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Gross’ mission, part of the agency’s “regime-change” programs, was “dangerous and counterproductive.”
The operation involved the smuggling of parabolic satellite dishes hidden in Styrofoam boogie boards, Armstrong said. Cash was transported to Cuba to finance demonstrations against the Castro regime.
“They were sending this poor guy into one of the most sophisticated counterintelligence operating environments in the world,” said Armstrong, who spent 25 years as a CIA officer. “It was not credible his story about the Jews. It didn’t make sense.”
Sentenced behind closed doors
In March 2011, Gross was tried behind closed doors for two days and convicted of attempting to set up an Internet network for Cuban dissidents “to promote destabilizing activities and subvert constitutional order.”
He was sentenced to 15 years.
A 2012 lawsuit filed by Gross’ wife, Judy, accused USAID and Development Alternatives Inc. — the company that sent him to the island — of negligence. It said the agencies had a contract “to establish operations supporting the creation of a USAID Mission” in Cuba.
In 2013, Gross reached a financial settlement with Development Alternatives.
Gross ‘wasting away,’ his wife says
“Alan is resolved that he will not endure another year imprisoned in Cuba, and I am afraid that we are at the end,” his wife, Judy Gross, said this month.
“After five years of literally wasting away, Alan is done,” she said. “It is time for President Obama to bring Alan back to the United States now; otherwise, it will be too late.”
In July, Gross said goodbye to his wife and daughter, and he refused to see them again while he was imprisoned.
He also refused to meet with U.S. diplomats in Havana to protest the slow progress in efforts to free him.
During his years in prison, his mother and daughter battled cancer.
Gross’ mother died
His mother died this year, and Cuba had refused Gross’ request to travel to the United States to say goodbye in her final days. He had promised to return to his prison cell at a military hospital in Havana.
“We would like to convey our heartfelt condolences to his relatives,” Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs official Josefina Vidal said in a statement at the time. “It is necessary to clarify that neither the Cuban penitentiary system nor the U.S. penitentiary system provide the possibility for inmates to travel abroad, no matter the reason.”
But Gross’ experience in jail has not been like that of most U.S. inmates.
“Alan is confined to one room, 23 hours a day,” his attorney Scott Gilbert told CNN in April. “He spends his day there in pajamas, he’s fed meals in his room. He’s let out for an hour a day, to exercise an hour a day in a small, walled courtyard where you can barely see the sky.”
Attorney: Gross’ treatment ‘cruel, inhuman, and degrading’
Leading human rights attorney Jared Genser had pushed for Gross’ release. In 2012, he wrote the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, saying Gross was being “denied adequate medical diagnosis and treatment for the last six months, which constitutes cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment under international law.”
Gross “suffers from a number of ailments including degenerative arthritis,” Genser wrote. His “repeated requests for an independent medical evaluation have been denied.”
A mass developed on Gross’ right shoulder, and he was not given adequate medical diagnosis and treatment, the attorney said.
A website pushing for Gross’ release shows how his health deteriorated.
During his career, he helped people in more than 50 countries and territories, the site says. His work included helping communities in Pakistan, creating jobs in the West Bank and Gaza, and designing agricultural improvement projects in Azerbaijan, Bulgaria and the West Bank, the website says.
