Former US president Jimmy Carter met in Cuba Wednesday with a US contractor jailed on state security charges, calling for the communist-ruled island to release him because he is "innocent" of serious crimes. Carter told reporters on the final day of his Cuba visit, which came at Havana's invitation, that he had a "very good meeting" with US State Department contractor Alan Gross, held in a Cuban jail since late 2009 and sentenced this month to 15 years in prison.
The 86-year-old former US president and Nobel Peace Prize laureate said he hoped the government of President Raul Castro would either pardon Gross or release him on humanitarian grounds. "I think that Alan Gross should be released because he's innocent of any serious crime," and "any serious threat to the Cuban government or the Cuban people," Carter said.
"He obviously professes his innocence, as he did in his trial," Carter added. Carter's camp has stressed the private nature of his visit, but it clearly carries political weight as he is among the most important US officials to meet with Cuba's communist leadership in its almost five-decade rule.
On Tuesday he met with Castro in a bid to ease strained bilateral ties frayed further by Havana's imprisonment of Gross, and acknowledged discussing Gross's case with Cuban officials, but Carter has insisted he was "not here to take him out of the country," but to meet "ordinary citizens." On Wednesday at a hotel in historic downtown Havana, Carter met with more than 20 dissidents, including 10 former political prisoners - some of whom only just got out of jail - leaders of the Ladies in White opposition group and anti-regime bloggers such as Yoani Sanchez.
The dissidents said Carter's credibility in international negotiations could go far towards helping win Gross's release. "Because he has the experience that managed the release (in 2010) of an American in North Korea, maybe he can do the same here, but the Cuban government is harder," said Sanchez, who heads the illegal but tolerated Cuban Commission for Human Rights.
"Carter understands the suffering of the Cuban people," onetime political prisoner Oscar Biscet said after Carter's meeting with dissidents. "I would like him to help us, and for him, his people and their government to help us achieve human rights and the move toward freedom." US diplomats have left little doubt that, while Carter is not an official envoy, they hoped he would intercede in the Gross case.
Gross, 61, was convicted, following a brief trial, of "acts against the independence or territorial integrity" of Cuba, and sentenced to 15 years. He was arrested in December 2009 for delivering laptops and communications devices to Cuba's small Jewish community, although the community's leaders have denied that. Carter met with the island's Jewish community leaders on Monday. Carter first visited Cuba in 2002, hosted by revolutionary leader and then-president Fidel Castro, and called for Washington to end its crippling decades-long economic embargo on the island.
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