By Lawrence Hurley
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal filed by Alan Gross, the U.S. contractor imprisoned in Cuba for five years who had sued the U.S. government for negligence.
Gross, 65, was released in December as part of the recent thaw in relations between the United States and Cuba. Gross, jailed in Cuba in December 2009, was serving a 15-year sentence for providing Internet equipment to Jewish Cubans under a U.S. program that Cuba viewed as subversive.
He and his wife sued the U.S. government in 2012, claiming it had sent him to Cuba without proper training or supervision.
A district court judge threw out the lawsuit, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed in a November 2014 ruling. The court said the U.S. government could not be sued in part because the claims concerned acts that took place in another country.
Separately, Gross is due to receive $3.2 million as part of a settlement reached with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the contractor for which he worked, Bethesda, Maryland-based DAI.
During five trips to Cuba in 2009, Gross imported banned satellite communications devices and other high-tech gear in his luggage and helped install it at Jewish centers in Havana, Santiago and Camaguey. Cuban officials arrested him in his hotel room shortly before he had planned to return home.
His release helped pave the way toward restoring U.S. diplomatic ties with Cuba. Gross attended President Barack Obama's State of the Union address as a guest of first lady Michelle Obama in January.
The case is Alan Gross v. U.S., U.S. Supreme Court, No. 14-982.