Alan Gross, USAID Contractor, Begins Hunger Strike In Cuban Prison

Alan Gross, the 64-year-old subcontractor for the US Agency for International Development (USAID) who has spent more than four years in prison in Cuba for helping distribute communications equipment to members of the Cuban Jewish community, has begun a hunger strike, according to El Nuevo Herald. The news comes on the heels of the revelation that USAID had funded and launched a social-media platform dubbed “Cuban Twitter” which sought to draw users with low-cost communications services with the ultimate goal of fomenting regime change in Cuba.

The platform, which was eventually scrapped for lack of funding after drawing as many as 40,000 users, was launched after Gross was arrested in 2009. On Tuesday, his lawyer told the AP that learning that the US government had gone ahead with the program after his arrest had been the “last straw”. In a statement, Gross said he was fasting “to object to mistruths, deceptions, and inaction by both governments, not only regarding their shared responsibility for my arbitrary detention, but also because of the lack of any reasonable or valid effort to resolve this shameful ordeal.”

"Once Alan was arrested, it is shocking that USAID would imperil his safety even further by running a covert operation in Cuba," Gross’s lawyer told the Miami New Times. "USAID has made one absurdly bad decision after another. Running this program is contrary to everything we have been told by high-level representatives of the Obama administration about USAID's activities in Cuba." The site notes that Gross had been distributing computer and satellite devices with Development Alternatives Inc., which had won a contract from USAID during the Bush administration.

Gross wrote a letter to President Obama in early December criticizing the administration for “abandoning” him and calling upon the president to engage with Cuba to secure his release. He repeated those calls in his statement on Tuesday. "Once again, I am calling on President Obama to get personally involved in ending this standoff so that I can return home to my wife and daughters,” he said.