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Updated at 9:21 a.m. ET

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. A senior administration official said Gross was released on humanitarian grounds in exchange for three Cubans jailed in the U.S.

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 covertly distributing 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.

In December 2013, Peter Wallsten of The Washington Post told NPR Gross was being detained in a 10-foot by 12-foot room, with two other prisoners.

This month, Gross' wife, Judy, said her husband had lost more than 100 pounds during his detention. "He can barely walk due to chronic pain, and he has lost five teeth and much of the sight in his right eye," she said in a statement.

In an interview in June with NPR, Judy Gross said her husband was "despondent and very hopeless." She warned that he had said he would "take drastic measures if he's not out very shortly."

Gross had staged a nine-day hunger strike earlier this year.

Alan Gross

Cuba

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