Friday, November 24, 2006

by Tom Brown

MIAMI, USA (Reuters): Janet Ray Weininger finally won a battle against Cuban leader Fidel Castro last week when a court ordered she can collect $23.9 million in frozen Cuban funds in compensation for her executed father.

But Weininger said the long-fought victory in a wrongful death lawsuit against the Cuban government won't make her forget what she sees as Castro's cruelty.

For years she had written the Cuban president, seeking information on the fate of her father, a CIA contractor whose plane was shot down by Cuban anti-aircraft guns during the US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961.

The attempted invasion by Miami-based Cuban exiles failed miserably and Castro went on to defy repeated US attempts to overthrow him.

"He answered me by sending me a bloodied back-and-white photo of him," Weininger told Reuters on Thursday.

The photo sent in 1978 showed the lifeless body of Thomas "Pete" Ray in a coffin. In a note, Castro wrote, "I have your father's body; I've kept him in a morgue."

"This was Fidel Castro's trophy," Weininger, 52, adding that Castro's note to her was initially given to author Peter Wyden while he was in Cuba doing research for his book "Bay of Pigs, The Untold Story" in the late 1970s.

"That was devastating for me, to see my father that way. One of the hardest things I did was having to look at him ... the way he looked in that coffin it will haunt me till the day I die."

Weininger and the family of another American, Howard Anderson, were cleared by a US District court judge in New York on Friday to collect nearly $91 million after they won two separate lawsuits, in 2003 and 2004, against Cuba for killings that took place soon after the Bay of Pigs assault.

The earlier judgments in Florida courts, to collect from Cuban accounts held at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., were blocked by office products giant OfficeMax Inc. on grounds that it has the largest single claim against the Cuban government for property expropriated after the communist-ruled island's 1959 revolution.

OfficeMax declined to comment on last Friday's ruling by US District Court Judge Victor Marrero in New York and there has been no reaction from Cuban authorities. A source close to OfficeMax said it had no immediate intention to appeal, however, finally clearing the way for Weininger to get her compensation. Because the money is held by a US bank, payment should be straightforward now the court has ruled.

Weininger said Castro eventually allowed her father's body to be returned home to the United States. But that's when an autopsy revealed more upsetting news about his death.

None of the injuries he suffered when his plane was shot down were life-threatening, she said. He was executed, she added, with a gunshot fired at point-blank range to the head.

"I wanted to honour him by seeking justice for him. And I'm glad that no one escaped justice," Weininger said

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