Alan Gross, the American contractor who spent five years in Cuban detention, has been freed and is on his way back to the United States, ABC News and other news organizations are reporting.
ABC called the release part of a "landmark humanitarian prisoner exchange ... following more than a year of secret back channel talks at the highest levels of both governments."
As we previously reported, Gross, a subcontractor for the U.S. Agency for International Development, had been working on a program to improve Internet access for Jewish Cubans.
He was giving out laptops and mobile phones while traveling in Cuba on a tourist visa. He was arrested on Dec. 3, 2009. A Cuban court found him guilty of crimes against the state in 2011, and sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
We will update this story when we have more.
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