[7] He was prosecuted in 2011 after being accused of crimes against the Cuban state for furtively bringing military-grade communication equipment designed to evade detection to members of Cuba's Jewish community.

[8] After being accused of working for American intelligence services in January 2010, he was convicted of spying and for "acts against the independence or the territorial integrity of the state" in March 2011.

[13] While serving his prison sentence, his wife Judy Gross, sued Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI) and USAID for $60 million in federal court.

[14][17] He had a long career as an international development worker who had been active in some 50 countries and territories across the Middle East, Africa and Europe,[18] including Iraq and Afghanistan, where he was setting up satellite communications systems to NGOs.

[19] In 2001, he founded JBDC LLC, a small company that earned less than $70,000 in 2009, which supported "Internet connectivity in locations where there [is] little or no access," according to The New York Times.

[21][14] Gross was working as a subcontractor to Development Alternatives Inc. (DAI), the prime contractor working with USAID, which had won a $6 million U.S. government contract for the program in which Gross was involved, a controversial "democracy-promotion program" that ballooned under the George W. Bush administration, to provide communications equipment to break the Cuban government's 'information blockade.

[22] According to American officials, Gross visited Cuba four times in five months in 2009 on a tourist visa before his arrest to deliver computer and satellite equipment to three Jewish community groups.

[20] As reported by The Jewish Daily Forward, Cuba's small Jewish community, numbering fewer than 2,000 people who mainly live in Havana, enjoys full religious freedom, the possibility to emigrate to Israel and fairly good relations with the government under Raúl Castro,[6] but has little influence, making observers wonder why the United States provides material to them under a USAID program that usually targets dissidents.

According to a Latin America specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations, it is possible that Gross's mission was useful only inasmuch as it satisfied Congressional demands to take action in Cuba.

She also represented the families of five Cubans held in U.S. prisons after being convicted in 2001 on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage against U.S. military installations, leading to the immediate speculation after Gross's arrest that Cuba wanted to swap him for the five.

[29][35] According to the Cuban News Agency, he had been part of a "subversive project of the U.S. government that aimed to destroy the Revolution through the use of communication systems out of the control of authorities.

Having already served a 15-month sentence in a Cuban prison, Alan and his family have paid an enormous personal price in the long-standing political feud between Cuba and the United States."

[29] U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor responded to the ruling, saying that it "adds another injustice to Alan Gross's ordeal," and that "he has already spent too many days in detention and should not spend one more," and asked for "the immediate release of Mr.

[37] The Jewish community and others called on Pope Benedict XVI to appeal to Raul Castro during his visit to Cuba in March 2012 to release Gross.

[24] Gross's wife, after fighting to persuade the organized Jewish community to rally behind a humanitarian campaign to free her husband, publicly criticized President Barack Obama and U.S. policy toward Cuba.

[24] In a March 13, 2012 interview with Politico, after having hired the public relations company Burson-Marsteller on the State Department′s recommendation,[24] she called her husband a "pawn" in a "failed policy" between the Cuban and American governments, adding "the trial wasn't about him.

"[37] Gross reportedly insisted that his "goals were not the same as the program that sent [him]," and called on the Obama administration to meet Cuba at the negotiating table to solve bilateral issues between the two states, including his case.

[52] Gross's former lawyer, Jared Genser, issued a press release saying he had filed a petition with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.

[56] In November 2012, the Miami Herald reported that New York Rabbi Elie Abadie, who is also a physician, told the Associated Press that "Alan Gross does not have any cancerous growth at this time, at least based on the studies I was shown and based on the examination, and I think he understands that also," after personally examining Gross and receiving a briefing from a team of Cuban physicians who attended him.

Interests Section in Havana, a doctor and nurse from the U.S. mission, and members of the Cuban medical team that presented the results of the biopsy performed on the lesion behind Gross's right shoulder, confirmed that the hematoma was not cancerous.

[43] In November 2012, Gross and his wife Judith sued DAI and USAID for failing to adequately prepare, train and supervise him given the dangerous nature of the program's activities.

[13] This exchange was part of the larger Cuban thaw, which occurred for a brief period towards the end of the Obama administration, and which saw improvements in diplomatic and trade relations between the United States and Cuba.