Case of American jailed in Cuba back in US court

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Case of American jailed in Cuba back in US court
Posted: Friday, September 19, 2014 4:11 pm | Updated: 8:02 pm, Fri Sep 19, 2014.
Associated Press |

WASHINGTON (AP) — A government subcontractor who has spent over four years imprisoned in Cuba should be allowed to sue the U.S. government over lost wages and legal fees, his attorney told an appeals court Friday.
Alan Gross was working in Cuba as a government subcontractor when he was arrested in 2009. He has since lost income and racked up legal fees, his attorney Barry Buchman told the three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. A lawyer for the government argued the claims are based on his detention in Cuba, making him ineligible to sue.

~snip~

A lower-court judge previously threw out Gross' lawsuit against the government in 2013, saying federal law bars lawsuits against the government based on injuries suffered in foreign countries. Gross' lawyers appealed.

Gross was detained in December 2009 while working to set up Internet access as a subcontractor for the U.S. government's U.S. Agency for International Development, which does work promoting democracy in the communist country. It was his fifth trip to Cuba to work with Jewish communities on setting up Internet access that bypassed local censorship. Cuba considers USAID's programs illegal attempts by the U.S. to undermine its government, and Gross was tried and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

On Friday, Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson asked a lawyer for the government, Alan Burch, if USAID was still sending people to Cuba. He responded he didn't know. A USAID spokesman declined to comment Friday on the case.

Read more: http://www.appeal-democrat.com/news/national/case-of-american-jailed-in-cuba-back-in-us-court/article_1e4787cb-aab9-58d6-bee1-942333e92057.html

[951-Riverside]

1. Is USAID the New CIA? Agency Secretly Built Cuban Twitter Program to Fuel Anti-Castro Protests

U.S. Secretly Created 'Cuban Twitter' to Stir Unrest." That is the name of an explosive new article by the Associated Press detailing how the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) created a fake Twitter program to undermine the Cuban government.

The communications network was called "ZunZuneo" — slang for a Cuban hummingbird’s tweet. It was reportedly built with secret shell companies financed through foreign banks. According to AP, the United States planned to use the platform to spread political content that might trigger a Cuban Spring, or, as one USAID document put it, "renegotiate the balance of power between the state and society." We speak to Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the National Security Archive. He recently wrote an article in Foreign Policy called "Our Man in Havana: Was USAID Planning to Overthrow Castro?"

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/4/is_usaid_the_new_cia_agency

Looks like this contractor had no idea what he signed up for and got screwed big time by this agency. He probably responded to a bid request, took the job and they left him high and dry.

If they're going to do clandestine work at the very least hire in house people or go with people who know what the mission is and the risks involved. You don't send some innocent subcontractor in as cannon fodder.

He deserves full back pay, plus a nice settlement and an apology.