MEXICO CITY — The Cuban government says he is perfectly fine. His lawyers say he could soon die of cancer. After nearly three years, the drama of Alan Gross, an American contractor imprisoned in Cuba nearly three years ago, has come down to this: a battle over a bulge of tissue on his shoulder.
Cuba’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement Wednesday asserting that Mr. Gross was healthier than his lawyers claimed, and that a biopsy had shown that a growth on his shoulder was not cancerous, as his legal team has suggested.
In response, Mr. Gross’s lawyer, Jared Genser, issued a statement declaring that a full examination by an independent doctor would be the best way to determine whether Mr. Gross was cancer free.
The dueling statements came as Mr. Gross’s family has intensified its campaign to win his release, through public rallies, a campaign in the United Nations accusing Cuba of human rights violations, and a lawsuit against the United States government.
And while the sparring over Mr. Gross’s health pushed his case back into the public eye — State Department officials called again for his release on Wednesday — it also revealed that the larger dispute over his detention and his work in Cuba is far from being resolved.
Both Cuba and the United States have resisted efforts to negotiate. Each has blamed the other side while holding firm to its own position.
“They are like a divorced couple who cannot talk civilly with one another, or refuse to do so for fear of recognizing one another’s legitimacy or point of view,” said Ted Henken, a Latin American studies professor at Baruch College.
Judy Gross, Mr. Gross’s wife, said the lack of meaningful negotiations led to the family’s more aggressive strategy. “I don’t like to shame people, but if that’s what it’s going to take, that’s what we need to do,” she said in an interview. And while she said that Cuba deserved much of the blame, as “a brutal Communist government,” the United States also deserved to be held accountable.
The lawsuit filed by Mr. and Mrs. Gross on Nov. 16 in federal court in Washington seeks up to $60 million from the United States and DAI, the contractor that hired Mr. Gross to go to Cuba in 2009 as part of a State Department program delivering satellite Internet equipment to Jewish groups. It accuses his employers of sending him on five semicovert trips to Cuba without proper training, protection or even a clear sense of the Cuban laws that led to his detainment.
Scott Gilbert, a member of the Gross’s legal team, said the lawsuit could be especially damaging for the State Department and DAI if the discovery process produces more examples of unqualified and ill-prepared contractors sent to Cuba. He said the lawsuit would, at the very least, draw more scrutiny to the American government’s pro-democracy effort.
The program was authorized in 1996 by the Helms-Burton Act, which tightened the Cuban trade embargo and allowed for money to be set aside for “democracy building efforts” that might hasten the fall of Fidel and Raúl Castro.
Soon after that, Cuba made collaboration with the program illegal, but it continued and grew.
President Obama inherited its $20 million budget when he took office. After Mr. Gross was detained on Dec. 3, 2009 — charged with subversive acts, and later sentenced to 15 years in prison — administration officials sought to reduce financing and alter elements of the programs. But the president’s efforts were rebuffed by Cuban-American lawmakers, including Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, who said in an interview that he had always opposed cuts to the program.
State Department officials declined to comment on the lawsuit, which indicated that Mr. Gross became more worried about his work with each trip. After his first visit working with DAI in the spring of 2009, he wrote a memo that said the group he met with “has specific concerns about government informants and the highest level of discretion is warranted.” By his third trip in June, he had become more blunt, writing to DAI that “this is very risky business in no uncertain terms.”
The lawsuit argues that these memos should have been enough to prompt additional training for Mr. Gross, or a new approach. Instead, the complaint says, DAI and the American government “failed to take an action to protect Mr. Gross.”
For Alan Gross Imprisoned in Cuba, Suit Against U.S. Is Part of New Strategy
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For Alan Gross Imprisoned in Cuba, Suit Against U.S. Is Part of New Strategy
