UPI – by Scott SmithWASHINGTON, Dec. 17 (UPI) — American contractor Alan Gross, 65, has been released in a prisoner swap with Cuba after 5 years in prison.
The swap is part of a larger initiative by President Barack Obama to overhaul frigid relations with Cuba.
The White House has scheduled a press conference for noon, when Obama is expected to deliver a statement on the most sweeping changes in relations between the United States and Cuba since the 1961 embargo was imposed.
Senior administration officials told CNN that the landmark deal with Cuba includes the release of a U.S. spy jailed in Cuba for 20 years, as well as Cuban spies held in the U.S. since 2001.
Gross was arrested after traveling to Cuba under the auspices of the U.S. Agency for International Development, delivering phones to Jewish residents on the island. Cuban officials claimed he was trying to foment a popular uprising.
Cuba and the United States have had frigid relations since Fidel Castro‘s communist revolution took over the country in 1959. Cuba quickly allied itself with Russia, which led to the the Cuban Missile Crisis showdown that put the world on the brink of nuclear war.
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