Bernie Sanders denies Alan Gross Cuba praise claim

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernard Sanders on Sunday denied that he praised Cuba when visiting a U.S. government worker imprisoned by the communist regime in Havana.

“I did not make that statement,” he said on “Fox News Sunday,” contradicting a claim made by Alan Gross, who spent five years in a Cuban prison and was visited during his captivity by Mr. Sanders.

Mr. Gross recently said that Mr. Sanders told him during the visit that he didn’t know “what’s so wrong” about Cuba.

Mr. Sanders said he recalled the visit and the deplorable conditions suffered by Mr. Gross. But he flatly denied defending the authoritarian regime in Cuba since Fidel Castro led the communist overthrow of the government in the 1950s.

Mr. Sanders, an avowed socialist, has often been criticized for praising the accomplishments of the Castro regime and other socialist and communist governments.

Mr. Gross was distributing telecommunications equipment in Cuba for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) when he was arrested in December 2009 on spying charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

He said the interaction with Mr. Sanders occurred when the Vermont senator visited Cuba with a congressional delegation in 2014.

“He said, quote: ’I don’t know what’s so wrong with this country,’” Mr. Gross said in an interview with NPR.

Mr. Sanders did not remember it that way.

“I remember that trip. I remember that trip very well and I remember the terrible conditions that Mr. Gross lived in,” he said. “His teeth were rotting. I did not make that statement. Why Mr. Gross is saying that I have no idea. But I did not make that statement.”