Reuters
Wednesday, January 10, 2007; 1:55 PM
HAVANA (Reuters) - Cuba on Wednesday condemned as "theft" the use of
frozen Cuban assets in the United States to compensate the families of
two Americans killed in the 1961 U.S.-backed Bay of Pigs invasion.
The families of Thomas Ray, a CIA contractor whose plane was shot down
by Cuban anti-aircraft guns, and Howard Anderson, who was executed by a
firing squad, were cleared by a U.S. court in November to collect nearly
$91 million after they won separate lawsuits, in 2003 and 2004, against
Cuba.
The Cuban Foreign Ministry said the families were paid $72.1 million on
November 27 from bank accounts holding frozen funds belonging to the
National Bank of Cuba and the country's telecommunications company.
It was the fourth compensation payout since 1996, totaling $170.2
million in Cuban funds, a ministry statement published by the ruling
Communist Party newspaper Granma said.
"The government of Cuba condemns these new assaults on the Cuban funds
frozen in the United States because they violate international law and
are another example of U.S. government's criminal policy of blockade and
hostility against our country," it said.
The Bay of Pigs invasion by Miami-based Cuban exiles was quickly routed
by Fidel Castro's leftist government and was one of the worst fiascoes
of the Central Intelligence Agency, which had hoped to spark a popular
uprising against Castro.
Cuba denied that Ray was executed with a shot in the head after his
plane was downed, as maintained by his daughter Janet Ray Weininger in
her successful wrongful death lawsuit against the Cuban government.
His body was kept frozen in a Cuban morgue for 18 years until the CIA
recognized the identity of the American pilot and his remains were
returned to the United States in 1979, Cuba said.
The Cuban statement said Anderson was tried by a "revolutionary
tribunal" and condemned to death for his role in landing weapons sent to
Cuba by the CIA prior to the invasion.
The families won lawsuits in Florida courts that ordered compensation to
be paid from Cuban accounts held at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
The payment was blocked, however, by office-products firm OfficeMax Inc.
on grounds that it has the largest single claim against Cuba for
property expropriated after Castro's 1959 revolution.
The claim stems from Cuban electrical-company assets held by Boise
Cascade Corp, a forestry products firm which acquired OfficeMax in 2003
and later adopted the name.
All Cuban assets in the United States were frozen in July 1963, five
months after the Kennedy administration banned travel to Cuba and made
financial and commercial transactions with Cuba illegal for U.S. citizens.
U.S. courts have ordered compensation in three previous lawsuits brought
against Cuba by families of exiled pilots of two small planes shot down
by Cuban MiG fighters in 1996. Part of the funds came from U.S. bank
accounts holding payments owed by U.S. carriers to Cuba's telephone company.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/10/AR2007011001249.html
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