A Cuban government statement published in Granma Friday says prosecutors have decided to seek a 20 year prison sentence for USAID contractor Alan Gross. His alleged crime, according to the statement: “Acts Against the Independence and Territorial Integrity of the State.”
Responding to the news, the Obama administration said Friday that “instead of releasing Mr. Gross so he can come home to his wife and family, today's decision by Cuban authorities compounds the injustice suffered by a man helping to increase the free flow of information, to, from, and among the Cuban people.” The Washington Post speculates that the announcement will freeze any further efforts by the Obama administration to further “soften” its Cuba policy.
House Foreign Affairs Committee chairwoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) called the statement regarding Mr. Gross “yet another wakeup call that the United States cannot negotiate with ruthless dictators.”
A more tempered response from Gross’s Washington DC lawyer, Peter Kahn, who says the announcement was a “positive development” in the sense that it means the case is moving forward. Kahn adds that the charges show how his client remains “caught in the middle of a long-standing political dispute between the United States and Cuba.”
Friday’s announcement has been expected for some time it seems. Reuters says an unnamed Western diplomat indicated recently that a trial was likely to begin shortly, with Mr. Gross pleading guilty, and then being sent back to the US. Cuba watchers Arturo Lopez-Levy at the University of Denver, and Phil Peters of the Lexington Institute say a scenario like that still remains a possible. In fact, the new charges, says Lopez-Levy, may open the door for the Cuban government to release Gross and then showcase the move as a “humanitarian gesture.”
Gross was arrested at a Havana hotel in 2009. Although no formal charges have been filed, Gross was accused by the Cuban government of illegally importing satellite communications equipment while working under a secretive American democracy-promotion program begun during the George W. Bush years. Cuban authorities have also suggested Gross was acting as a spy – a charge US officials have long denied.
Interestingly, the news of developments in the Gross case come as the Cuban government released yet another high profile political prisoner Friday. Guido Sigler, one of the 11 remaining detainees picked up in a 2003 crackdown on dissidents, was released to his home in Matanzas late last week and is expected to leave shortly for the United States. The AP says a second dissident, Angel Moya, also of the remaining 11, is expected to be released in the coming days. It appears he will be allowed to remain in Cuba. Moya is the brother of Bertha Soler, a leader of the Ladies in White.
To other stories:
· Stories from the Economist, the New York Times, and TIME on Haiti after the Provisional Electoral Council’s (CEP) decision last week to replace Jude Celestin with Michel Martelly in a second-round runoff, currently scheduled for March 20. Pooja Bhatia for the Economist looks at the horse-trading of legislative seats that may have opened the door to a forced compromise about a second-round presidential runoff. The government’s INITE party, she writes, ended up with 68 of 99 seats in the lower house, and all but one of 11 open Senate seats. The result: probable executive-legislative deadlock that will make it difficult for a new president to enact any sort of sweeping changes. But, that problem will only arise if/when a runoff actually occurs. And as the New York Times reports today, few are optimistic that the problems of round one will be avoided in round two. Michèle D. Pierre-Louis, the former prime minister who now heads the Open Society Institute’s foundation in Haiti:
“I’m pessimistic, considering the state the country is now in and the effort of transcendence that Haiti needs to really become engaged in reconstruction. Unless there is something which I can’t foresee, we’re heading toward major problems.”
OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, whose organization issued the much scrutinized recommendation that the government drop Jude Celestin from a runoff election, even seems skeptical now. “The important thing is the quality of the workers in the polling places,” he tells the Times. “I’m not sure if in 40 days they will be able to do it.” Also, new reports that the delayed release of the final first-round results was likely due to serious differences of opinion within the CEP. CEP official Ginette Chérubin, in a letter sent to Haitian news outlets this week, says she and three of her colleagues did not sign on to the decision adding Mr. Martelly to the runoff, “casting further doubt on its legitimacy,” in the Times words.
· In other Haiti news, Jean-Bertrand Aristide has added to speculation about a possible return from exile, publishing an opinion piece in The Guardian on Friday. His principal concern, he maintains, is the issue of education in Haiti. Reports also that Aristide’s Miami-based lawyer, Ira Kurzban, may go to Port-au-Prince in the coming days to personally deliver additional documents Mr. Aristide would need to obtain a diplomatic passport. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal, in an editorial Saturday, says the US should resurrect investigations of the ousted president which could implicate him in drug trafficking.
· The Washington Post’s Juan Forero looks at Juan Manuel Santos’s plan for land reform in Colombia. Alejandro Reyes, a land expert hired to lead the Agriculture Ministry's restitution efforts, calls the project a “critical stage” that could “define the course of the war” with the country’s guerrilla groups. Santos himself has billed the project as perhaps “the most profound social revolution in Colombia’s history.” And, according to the Post, there are some indications that land reform could bring guerrilla groups to the negotiating table. For one, FARC commander, Alfonso Cano has said that a land restitution program and efforts to compensate victims of political violence are “essential to a future of reconciliation” and could “contribute to a real solution to the conflict.”
· On similar matters, El Tiempo with a piece this weekend on the “political resurrection” of Piedad Cordoba, just four months after being removed from the Senate and banned from public office for 18 years. Now, according to the paper, the Santos government has suggested it may use Cordoba as a mediator with the FARC.
· TIME asks whether or not Brazil, under Dilma Roussseff, is prepared to open up investigations into human rights violations committed during 21 years of dictatorship. Beatriz Affonso, director of the Center for Justice and International Law, offers her opinion: “I don't think she will do much just yet, as she doesn't want to cause instability in her first year in office. But I think she will create conditions for it to happen.”
· Mercopress with news that Brazil and the UK may be on the verge of signing a major defense agreement, worth billions. Mercopress says the deal would modernize the Brazilian Navy with six new patrol vessels and five or six frigates Type 26. The motivation for the purchases lies in the development of Brazil’s offshore oil industry, according to the report.
· Adam Isacson, in Current History, with a regional look at who is rearming in the region and why.
· Also on military matters, an interesting investigative piece by Uruguayan journalist Roger Rodriguez, for the Centro de Investigación e Información Periodistica (CIPER), about a new regional campaign being launched by a group of retired Uruguayan military officers to, among other things, end the prosecution of military officials for abuses committed during the cold war era and free those who have been imprisoned for such crimes.
· More on Hector Timerman’s comments about Argentine police officers participating in ILEA training courses, in Argentina’s La Nación this weekend, as well as an article penned by Timerman himself on the matter late last week.
· The New York Times on rising worries of inflation in Argentina.
· Reporters Without Borders has issued a statement calling on Honduras’s telecommunications agency, CONATEL, to withdraw a proposal to suspend low-power broadcast frequencies to community radio stations.
· Amnesty International with a new statement calling on the Mexican government to safeguard a migrant shelter in the central state of Mexico. AI says the San Juan Diego Migrant House and its director Guadalupe Calzada have come under new threats of violence.
· The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights calls on the US to halt deportations of undocumented Haitians back to Haiti.
· In Venezuela, the New York Times’ Simon Romero profiles the outspoken US-born chavista activist and commentator, Eva Golinger, on Saturday. And Eva Golinger responds at her blog, Postcards from the Revolution.
· Finally, two opinions that illustrate competing logics about the direction US hemispheric policy should take. The Council of the Americas’ Eric Farnsworth, in the Miami Herald, suggests the Obama administration use its visit to Brazil in March to “develop and reassert a common policy agenda” with the region, centered around trade, so as to prevent Brazilian leadership from “becoming the default position for the region.” Meanwhile, the Institute for Policy Studies’ Manuel Perez-Rocha and Stuart Trew of the Council of Canadians, writing ahead of a meeting between Barack Obama and Stephen Harper last Friday, criticize the “regurgitation” of the now defunct “Security and Prosperity Partnership” (SPP) and its notion of “deep integration” which would “arm NAFTA” to “keep goods, services, and investment flowing across borders.”
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