American Alan Gross, a former State Department contractor who is jailed in Cuba as a spy, has lost a lawsuit against the US government, court documents showed Wednesday.
“Because the (US) federal government retains immunity for injuries suffered in foreign countries, the Court will grant the Motion” to dismiss Gross’s lawsuit, District Judge James Boasberg said in the decision released Tuesday.
Gross’s defense attorney Scott Gilbert noted disappointment at the ruling but told AFP by email that “we will file a notice of appeal very shortly.”
Gross and his family had sought up to $60 million from the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the contractor that sent him to Cuba, DAI, for allegedly not informing him sufficiently of the danger he faced.
Gross, 64, was arrested in December 2009 for distributing laptops and communications equipment to members of Cuba’s small Jewish community under a State Department contract.
He quickly became a political pawn between Washington and Havana, the Americas’ only one-party Communist nation. The neighboring countries do not have full diplomatic relations.
The United States has demanded Gross’s release but made no real progress. Cuba has publicly tried to link his release to negotiations on a potential deal on freeing Cubans jailed as spies in the United States.
American jailed in Cuba loses lawsuit against US
