Thursday, January 11, 2007

HAVANA, Cuba (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 US-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 US 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 Nov. 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 US 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 recognised 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 US citizens.

US 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 US bank accounts holding payments owed by US carriers to Cuba's telephone company.

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