Reuters/Havana

Jailed US aid contractor Alan Gross
Cuba’s Supreme Court has upheld the 15-year prison sentence of jailed American aid contractor Alan Gross for trying to set up Internet networks in Cuba, in a damaging decision for US-Cuba relations.
The Cuban government said on Friday the court upheld the finding in his March trial that he illegally took equipment into Cuba to spread Internet access under a US program “to subvert the Cuban constitutional order.”
The case has brought US-Cuba relations to a standstill after a brief warming under President Barack Obama, who eased US travel restrictions to Cuba and allowed a free flow of remittances to the island before Gross, 62, was arrested in December 2009.
The Obama administration has said there would be no more improvement in US-Cuba relations as long as Cuba imprisons Gross, who has been behind bars for 20 months, and called for him to be “immediately and unconditionally” released.
“We deplore the ruling of the Cuban Supreme Court,” said US State Department spokesman Mark Toner. “We will continue to use every available diplomatic channel to press for his release.”
The court’s decision followed a July 22 appeal to the Supreme Court that was Gross’ last legal recourse in the case.
The outcome was not a major surprise, although some had expected the court to at least reduce his sentence.
The court rejected Gross’ defence that he intended no harm toward Cuba and was only trying to provide more Internet access to the island’s small Jewish community.
He was working for a secretive US Agency for International Development program that Cuba views as part of longstanding US efforts to destabilise the island’s government. It considers the Internet one of the new battlegrounds in the two countries’ half-century old ideological conflict.
The programme has drawn criticism in Washington for ineffectiveness and for putting Gross, who had engaged in development projects around the world, in danger.
His wife, Judy Gross, has repeatedly pleaded that her husband be freed for humanitarian reasons because his elderly mother and their daughter are battling cancer and Gross is suffering health problems that have contributed to his losing 100lb (45kg) in jail.