Age: 62
Occupation: Aid worker
Gross insists he's no spy, just an aid worker who wanted to help Cuba's Jewish community get wired. But the Cuban government says he brought illegal satellite equipment to the island — and that he did so as a contractor for a U.S. program funded by a law that seeks the Castro regime's overthrow. That got Gross arrested in December 2009 and sentenced this year to 15 years in prison. Whatever his original mission, Gross has become a symbol of how dangerously dysfunctional Washington-Havana relations remain.