Cuba's Popular Supreme Court upheld Friday the 15-year jail sentence handed down to Jewish-American contractor Alan Gross, who was found guilty of crimes "against the independence or the integrity" of the Cuban state.
The pro-Cuban government website Cubadebate said the court dismissed Gross's appeal.
On March 11, a lower Cuban court had imposed the sentence on Gross, 62, an employee of a firm working for the U.S. State Department, for handing out satellite telecommunications equipment in defiance of laws on the Caribbean island.
The court said he had created secret networks to provide access to the internet to help opposition groups organize against the government of President Raul Castro. His actions violated "the territorial integrity of the state."
At the time, the US government protested the 15-year sentence as unjust. The U.S. government said Gross was not a spy, but was involved in distributing equipment and access to the internet for Jewish groups in Cuba.
Gross has been detained on the communist island since December 2009.
The Alan Gross case is a serious obstacle to dialogue between the two countries, the U.S. has said.
