November 02, 2018
Following our successful efforts to secure Alan Gross’s release from Cuban prison, we have played a key role in negotiating the release of four other Americans imprisoned abroad. We negotiated directly with the Cuban government and obtained the release of an American who had served 15 years of a 25-year sentence for attempting to smuggle his family from Cuba to the U.S. We were materially involved in a U.S.-Iran prisoner swap, which freed our client Amir Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine initially sentenced to death and imprisoned for 5 years in Iran. We also represented an American imprisoned in Vietnam for participating in a public demonstration. He was released following our work with the U.S. Embassy in Vietnam, the Vietnamese Embassy in D.C., the U.S. State Department, and Congress. Most recently, in 2019 Gilbert attorneys helped secure the release of Todd Leininger, a U.S. citizen who had been imprisoned in Venezuela on questionable charges since 2014.