7.07 p.m. ET (2308 GMT) June 1, 1999
The massive claim, filed on behalf of 3,478 Cubans said to
have been killed and 2,099 injured by U.S. "aggression,''
appeared to be Havana's response to an accumulation of hostile
actions imposed against the communist-ruled island by the United
States in recent years.
The Cuban Communist Party's daily newspaper, Granma,
published the legal demand, which it said was presented to a
Havana court Monday by various pro-government organizations
representing the people of Cuba, including a children's group.
Cuba's claim was lodged at Havana's Popular Provincial
Tribunal, but it was not clear what jurisdiction, if any, the
Castro government might seek beyond the island to press its
claim for a sum equivalent to 18 times its total foreign debt.
In the United States, Cuban exile groups and analysts said
the move seemed to be part political retaliation for U.S.
measures and part diversionary tactic to overshadow foreign
criticism of Havana's recent crackdown on internal opponents.
The eight-page document wove together law, history, politics
and extracts of declassified CIA papers to detail a litany of
direct and indirect "attacks'' since the 1959 revolution that
brought Castro to power.
The alleged "dirty war'' ranged from U.S. backing for the
so-called Escambray rebels in the 1960s and the failed Bay of
Pigs invasion in 1961, to subversion attempts from the U.S.
naval base of Guantanamo and the alleged planting of disease
germs in Cuba, the document said.
The document also claimed the Cuban people had been harmed
by a forced over-spending on military defenses to cope with the
constant threat from their northern neighbor.
And it detailed a history of "terrorism'' allegedly
supported by the United States, from the 1976 blowing up of a
Cuban plane, killing all 73 on board, to the 1997 bombing
campaign at Havana hotels that killed an Italian tourist.
The United States long has denied any involvement in the
hotel explosions and the airliner bombing over the Caribbean,
for which a Cuban exile was convicted by a Venezuelan court.
"All the hostile and aggressive actions carried out by the
U.S. government against Cuba, from the triumph of the Revolution
until now, have caused enormous material and human losses to the
people,'' the document said.
Castro's revolution, the Cuban document said, was "one of
the most humiliating political defeats in the existence of the
United States as a big, imperialist power.''
No reason was given for the timing of the legal demand.
But it probably was a response to recent legal measures in
the United States against Cuba such as a ruling that families of
three Miami-based pilots shot down by a Cuban warplane in 1996
are entitled to compensation.
Local legislator and well-known columnist Lazaro Barredo
said the action also was a fitting response to the 1996
Helms-Burton law that lays a legal framework for U.S. citizens
to pursue claims for compensation over property in Cuba
expropriated after Castro's revolution.
Cuba said it was demanding $30 million in direct
compensation for each of the 3,478 people it said were killed by
U.S. aggression and $15 million each for the 2,099 injured. It
also demanded $10 million each for the people killed, and $5
million each for the injured, to repay Cuban society for the
costs it has had to assume on their behalf.
The document said that was "substantially less'' than the
amount per person fixed by U.S. District Judge James Lawrence
King in the pilots' case, adding: "If we had established the
same base of calculation as Judge King, our claim would rise to
$217.523 billion.''
U.S. analysts said criticism of Cuba over the recent trial
of four dissidents may have triggered the claim.
"I think they were stung by world reaction to imprisonment
of the Havana Four and some other steps they've taken against
dissidents,'' said Wayne Smith, a former U.S. diplomat to
Havana. "This is an effort to deflect attention from that.''
Any claim for losses resulting from the embargo would fail
in international courts but claims resulting from the Bay of
Pigs invasion could be a different story, Smith added.
"This is vintage Castro,'' said Ninoska Perez, spokeswoman
for the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation, a key
anti-Castro exile group. "They are just running for cover, as
usual trying to create a bigger scandal.''