Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
caribbeannetnews.com

US judge tells Cuba to pay $400m for executing US man
12-16-2006

MIAMI, USA (AFP): A US judge Thursday ordered Cuba to pay 400 million dollars to the family of a US citizen summarily executed in 1960 for allegedly heading an invasion force, the family lawyer said.

"It is a significant judgment. I think it is the highest award" ordered against the Cuban government by a US judge, Al Perez told reporters.

He stressed "the gruesome nature of the execution" of Cuban-born Robert Fuller, who was 25 at the time.

"They paraded him like in a Roman Circus. The whole arrest, trial, appeals, execution lasted less than 24 hours," said the lawyer.

Fuller was shot by a firing squad in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba, on October 16, 1960.

Fuller, who was born in Cuba, came from a wealthy family whose lands and properties were seized after Fidel Castro's Communist revolution in 1959. He fled Cuba that same year as his relatives came under harassment of the revolutionary forces.

A former US Marine and Korean War veteran, Fuller returned to Cuba in 1960 heading an invasion force, according to Cuban charges at the time.

He was arrested on October 15, put on trial for 15 minutes that same day and sentenced to the firing squad the next morning. His body was placed in a common grave never to be found.

Miami-Dade county judge Thomas Wilson, invoking a 1996 law allowing damages for victims of terrorist states, ordered the Cuban government to pay the full compensation the family was seeking: 65 million dollars in compensation, 35 million dollars for damages and 300 million dollars in punitive damages.

The government of Cuba was not represented at the trial.