President Obama is set to deliver a statement of the release of Alan Gross after he was imprisoned for over 5 years in a Cuban jail. YWN will be carrying the stream for all readers to watch.

Gross, 65, was on an American government plane bound for the U.S. Wednesday morning after being released on humanitarian grounds by the Cuban government at the request of the Obama administration. As part of the secret negotiations to secure his release, the U.S. was releasing three Cuban jailed in Florida for spying.

Obama administration officials have considered Gross’ imprisonment an impediment to improving relations with Cuba.

Cuba was also releasing a non-American intelligence ‘asset’ along with Gross, according to a U.S. official. That official and others spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to be identified by name before Obama’s remarks.

Bonnie Rubinstein, Gross’ sister, heard the news from a cousin, who saw it on television.

“We’re like screaming and jumping up and down,” she said in a brief telephone interview from her home in Texas.

Gross was detained in December 2009 while working to set up Internet access as a subcontractor for the U.S. government’s U.S. Agency for International Development, which does work promoting democracy in the communist country. It was his fifth trip to Cuba to work with Jewish communities on setting up Internet access that bypassed local censorship.

Cuba considers USAID’s programs illegal attempts by the U.S. to undermine its government, and Gross was tried and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

(AP)