HAVANA -- The United States is responsible for ``bloody acts'' against Cuba, a former Cuban security official has testified in a lawsuit accusing the United States of waging a dirty war against the Communist-governed nation.

The lawsuit, filed in late May in Havana, asks for $181 billion in compensatory and punitive damages for the death of 3,478 Cubans and permanent injury to 2,099 other people in acts ranging from the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 to the bombing of Havana hotels in 1997.

More than 100 people are expected to testify before the hearings finish July 22. Huge piles of written evidence are expected to be presented.

On Monday, Anibal Velaz Suarez, the retired former head of State Security for central Cuba during the early 1960s, became the first witness. He testified about ``the barbaric bloody acts that the CIA committed with bandits'' in the years after President Fidel Castro's rise to power in 1959, including killing members of the new revolutionary government.

The hearings were being held at the Palace of the Revolution -- the seat of Cuba's Communist government -- rather than in a regular courtroom, demonstrating the political importance Castro is placing on the legal process.

The hearings will show ``the sick hostility signified by U.S. policy toward Cuba,'' the Communist Party workers' daily Trabajadores predicted Monday in a front-page story.

While the Cuban government is using the hearings to make a political point, it appeared unlikely the lawsuit would result in any damages being paid. There are no American funds in Cuba that can be frozen and seized.

No U.S. representative attended the court proceedings. And the U.S. government did not respond to the claim within 20 working days as required by Cuban law, said Juan Mendoza, one of Cuba's attorneys in the case.

The legal team hopes to show how U.S. policies have damaged Cuban society over the past 40 years, Mendoza said.

The plaintiffs include the National Association of Small Farmers, the Federation of Cuban Women, the Communist Workers of Cuba and the Federation of University Students -- all mass organizations associated with Cuba's government.

The lawsuit appears to be Havana's answer to a lawsuit in the United States. In that case, a federal judge in Miami has ordered Cuba to pay $187 million to the families of three Americans killed in 1996 when Cuban military jets shot down two small private planes off the island's coast.

Cuban authorities were infuriated by that lawsuit, as well as attempts to collect the money by seizing Cuban funds from telephone companies operating long-distance phone service between the two countries.

Cuba would need strong international backing in any attempt to force U.S. payment, perhaps from an international court.

New York attorney William H. Schaap, attending the hearings as a legal observer for the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild, said the case raises significant issues -- comparable to issues he said are raised by U.S. military attacks in Yugoslavia and Panama.

``I think it is a legitimate complaint under international law,'' he said. ``But the sad thing is that international law is no longer respected.''