Cuba hit with $253 mln verdict in Miami court

[Joanne98]

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0541992920080405

MIAMI (Reuters) - A Miami jury has awarded almost $253 million in a wrongful death case against Cuba, the biggest such penalty to date against the communist government, local media reported on Saturday.

The Miami Herald said the Miami-Dade circuit court jury delivered its verdict on Friday after a civil trial that began on Wednesday. The decision was not available on the court's Web site on Saturday.

The Cuban government chose not to be represented in the courtroom, the Miami Herald said.

The case involved Rafael del Pino Siero, a U.S. citizen who was a friend of Fidel Castro but turned against him after the bearded revolutionary took power in 1959, the Herald said.



Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0541992920080405

---

What a joke!

[merwin]

1. That's great and all, except for the fact that no US Citizen is allowed to

participate in any monetary transactions with Cuba. That makes it a bit hard to collect.

[Mika]

2. Maybe you should read the story.

:eyes:

[merwin]

3. What about the story did I miss?

[Mika]

4. That money has been previously paid from Cuban accounts held in escrow in other cases.

Problem is, now there is not that much money left.

Another thread with a Miami Herald version of the story ..

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=405x3304

[izquierdista]

5. Does it work the other way?

Can someone sue the U.S. government for $293 million and collect? Perhaps the citizens of the Lower 9th Ward, in a class action suit for negligence? Of course not! There's doctrines you know, that "sovereign immunity" stuff, and "Acts of God" that couldn't be foreseen (unless you know how to forecast the weather).

[ngant17]

6. that's nothing compared to what the US owes Cuba

see COMPENSATION CLAIM AGAINST THE UNITED STATES
<http://www.granma.cu/cubademanda/ingles/demanda14-i.html>

"After the presentation of evidence, lawyers representing the litigants asked the court to uphold the compensation claim for $1.81 billion USD for the lives of 3478 Cubans and the physical integrity of a further 2099"

"In terms of reparations for material damage, $30 million USD is being claimed for every person to have died (a total of $104.34 billion USD) and $15 million USD for each person maimed ($31.485 billion USD). In relation to compensation for damages, $10 million for each person to have died (total: $34.78 billion USD), and $5 million for each person maimed ($10.495 billion)."

"Although pain and tears have no price," the people’s counsel concluded, "the damage exists and reparations are enshrined in all civil codes."
------------------------------------------
Note also that the US likely owes billions to Nicaragua for its terrorist war during the 1908's:

Noam Chomsky: "Nicaragua in the 1980s was subjected to violent assault by the U.S. Tens of thousands of people died. The country was substantially destroyed, it may never recover. The effects on the country are much more severe even than the tragedies in New York the other day. They didn’t respond by setting off bombs in Washington. They went to the World Court, which issued a judgment in their favor condemning the U.S. for what it called "unlawful use of force", which means international terrorism, ordering the U.S. to desist and pay substantial reparations. The U.S. dismissed the court judgment with contempt, responding with an immediate escalation of the attack.

--------------------
One of the biggest problems in the suit by the Miami court is that it has no way to submit an international lawsuit against Cuba. It has to be filed to the World Court to carry any legal weight internationally.

When the United States was brought in front of the World Court for mining the harbor in Nicaragua and for supplying the Contras, a judgment was awarded to the Nicaraguans, but the United States pulled out of the World Court so essentially the US government won't recognize the World Court anymore.

Note that this is probably the reason the Cubans did not bring the suit in the World Court as the US no longer recognizes the authority of the World Court in Hague.

Thus, Cuba's lawsuit was filed in the Provincial Court in Havana on May 31, 1999. As stated above, it covers the period of 1960 to that date, and as of that date, the U.S. government has been responsible for killing 3478 persons in Cuba and it has been responsible for bodily injuring 2099 people.

The United States was duly served through its interest section there, the United States refused to defend itself from the charges. Because it was obvious it could not refute any of these facts, no matter where the court was going to be located.



Cuba may not be able to collect on the judgment, but it has all the facts documented and the US chose not to defend itself.

[Mika]

7. Kick for this post.

n/t

[Judi Lynn]

8. Cuba has had to live with 50 years of terrorism, bombings, kidnappings, murders,

even acts as crude and obnoxious as attacks through biological warfare. This was entered into a trial of Cuban "exile" terrorist/murderer Eduardo Arocena, in New York, after he helped kill a Cuban diplomat assigned to the U.N. It's mentioned in this article:

Last year Josh Bolton, US Under Secretary of State, gave a speech before the rabid rightwing Heritage Foundation entitled "Beyond the Axis of Evil." In the speech, Bolton designated Cuba, Libya and Syria as "rogue states," in other words states facing possible military action. Bolton went so far as to say "Cuba's threat to our security has often been underplayed," stopping an inch short of claiming Castro plans to attack Florida with biological weapons.

It was the other way around, though.

Back in 1961 and 1962, the CIA used biological weapons on Cuba's agricultural workers. A decade later, the CIA introduced swine fever into the island, precipitating an epidemic which culminated in the death of 500,000 pigs.

The Washington Post further detailed the US covert war against Cuba in 1979 when it published an article claiming the Pentagon had produced biological agents to use against Cuba's sugar cane and tobacco production. Other suspicious disease outbreaks include haemorraghic conjunctivitis, dengue fever, dysentery, ulcerative mammillitis, black sigatoka, and citric sapper blight, to name but a few. In 1977, CIA documents disclosed that the Agency "maintained a clandestine anti-crop warfare research program targeted during the 1960s at a number of countries throughout the world," according to the Washington Post.

"In 1984, Eduardo Arocena, leader of the terrorist group OMEGA-7, admitted to an American jury that he had taken part in operations to introduce deadly viruses into Cuba as part of a secret biological warfare programme against Havana," writes Marcia Miranda. Arocena was trained in the use of explosives by Cuban exiles who were trained by the CIA.

http://raceandhistory.com/selfnews/viewnews.cgi?newsid1066077200,66752,.shtml

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Trial transcript, etc. of Eduardo Victor Arocena Perez:
http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/arocena.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This terrorist is mentioned in this report:

In the trial held in the United States in 1984 against Eduardo Arocena, a
ringleader of the terrorist organization Omega-7, he publicly confessed to having
introduced germs into Cuba and admitted that hemorrhagic dengue fever had been
introduced in the island through related groups of Cuban origin, based in the
United States.
(snip)

There is a mountain of evidence, background information and facts that cannot
possibly be ignored.

What is beyond question is that, in just a few weeks, the hemorrhagic dengue
epidemic in Cuba --where it had never existed-- had affected a total of 344,203
people, a figure with no known precedent in any other country of the world. There
was another truly record case when 11,400 new patients were reported in a single
day on July 6, 1981.

A total of 116,143 cases were hospitalized. About 24,000 patients suffered from
hemorrhaging and 10,224 suffered some degree of dengue-induced shock.

One hundred and fifty-eight people died as a result of the epidemic, including 101
children.

The whole country and all its resources were mobilized to fight the epidemic. The
vector's presence was strongly and simultaneously controlled in all of Cuba's towns
and cities, using all possible means and with products and equipment urgently
bought from anywhere, including the United States. A request was made to the United
States through the Pan-American Health Organization and finally, in the month of
August, an important larvicide could be bought. Chemicals and equipment were
brought in, often by plane and sometimes from countries as far away as Japan, whose
factories sold Cuba thousands of individual motor fumigators. Malathion had to be
brought from Europe at a transportation fee of 5,000 dollars a ton, that is, three
and a half times the cost of the product.

In addition to the existing hospital network, dozens of boarding schools were
turned into hospitals in order to isolate every new patient reported, without
exception. At the same time, intensive-care units were built and equipped in all of
the country's children hospitals.

This is how the last infected case was reported on October 10, 1981.

If it had not been for this enormous effort, tens of thousands of people, the vast
majority of them children, would have died. An epidemic that many experts had
forecast would take years to eradicate was defeated in little more than four
months. The adverse economic impact was also considerable.

The list of the dead as a result of the epidemic is authenticated through the
corresponding certifications issued by the Ministry of Public Health, and attached
as document number 22.

More:
http://everything2.com/e2node/Cuba%2520vs.%2520US%2520Govt%253A%2520part%25205

[ngant17]

11. Yes, the dengue epidemic was mentioned on Day 13

of the 1999 trail, aka the People of Cuba vrs. the Government of the United States.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito was the vector of the disease and it is highly unlikely that it was ever a natural event. Cuba had been free of dengue fever since 1944. There had not been a case of its most fatal form (haemorrhagic dengue fever, which involves internal bleeding) for 80 years. Yet, from May to October 1981, there were 300,000 cases of haemorrhagic dengue fever; at the outbreak's peak, there were 10,000 new cases per day. More than 150 people died, 100 were children.

The highly unusual epidemiology — simultaneous outbreaks in three widely separated provinces, with no evidence of contact with people from dengue-prone countries — pointed to the deliberate and artificial introduction of dengue-infected mosquitoes.

I think the other acts of biowarfare committed by the US government against Cuba should have been included in this trial, i.e. The African swine flu outbreak of 1971, ect., but I haven't seen any of the evidence presented in the trial.

A good summation of the biowarfare against Cuba is here:

<http://www.poptel.org.uk/cuba-solidarity/CubaSi-January/Bio.html>

[samsingh]

9. good luck collecting

[IndianaGreen]

10. Rafael del Pino was CIA, former head of Cuba's Air Force

that collaborated with the Bay of Pigs invasion. I don't know who this Rafael del Pino in the Reuters story is, but if they are one and the same, the facts in the story don't match the historical facts.