The wife of an American intelligence contractor imprisoned in Cuba says he is suicidal and that she fears for his life.  She’s asking US President Barack Obama to agree to a prisoner swap with Cuba, the same way he authorized a swap to bring home America’s only POW in the Afghanistan War.

“If we can trade five members of the Taliban to bring home one American soldier, surely we can figure out a path forward to bring home one American citizen from a Cuban prison,” said Judy Gross in Havana, referring to US Soldier Bowe Bergdahl.  She’s in Cuba to visit her 65-year old husband Alan Gross who has been locked up since December 2009 for espionage. 

The usually rotund Gross has lost a lot of weight in Cuba, due to prison conditions and his hunger strike, which his elderly mother persuaded him to abandon.  But she recently died, sending him into a deep depression.

Alan Gross was working for USAID – a quasi-governmental agency that purports to “spread democracy”, but is frequently criticized for alleged covert activities on behalf of US business interests – on a project to install Internet equipment for Havana’s Jewish community.  Cuban authorities caught him carrying highly specialized equipment previously associated with the CIA that masks satellite phone communications.

Cuba has repeatedly suggested swapping Gross for the three remaining members of “The Cuban Five”, who were convicted of espionage and plotting to kill Luis Posada Carriles, an anti-Communist terrorist and mass-murderer whom the US is sheltering in Florida.  But Washington has thus far ruled out a swap.