Opinion

Gross Injustice

It’s now been almost five years since Alan Gross, the US aid worker imprisoned in Cuba, last saw his elderly mother.

Now he’ll never see her again.

Evelyn Gross died this week of lung cancer at age 92, two months after persuading her son to end a nine-day hunger strike to protest his continued imprisonment.

Evelyn’s son is serving a 15-year term for a “crime against the state”: trying to help Cuba’s Jewish community connect to the Internet. During his mother’s illness, Gross repeatedly begged Cuban authorities to be allowed to visit her, to no avail.

Instead, the regime continues to link his freedom to that of Cuban spies serving long sentences in American prisons.

Defending his decision to trade five Taliban commanders for a US soldier accused of deserting his post, President Obama said America leaves no man behind.

If true, America especially owes Alan Gross, who’s rotting away in a foreign prison for service to America while in a hostile country.

Back in 2009, President Obama famously shook Raul Castro’s hand at an international summit. We now learn the President Obama has asked the left-wing government in Uruguay to help persuade Cuba to let Gross go and open up to political reform.

Maybe we should try demanding the release of our man in Havana — and let Cuba learn that holding hostage a US citizen serving his nation carries a high price.