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CUBA
NEWS
The
Miami Herald
Senator: Embargo has not worked
The chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee
criticizes U.S. policy and signals he may support
lifting a travel ban.
By Richard Brand. rbrand@herald.com.
Posted on Fri, Oct. 03, 2003.
WASHINGTON - The chairman of the powerful Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, Richard Lugar, R-Ind.,
criticized U.S. policy toward Cuba during a hearing
Thursday, saying the 43-year-old trade embargo
on the communist island nation "has not worked.''
Lugar, who has usually maintained a low profile
on Cuban policy, also signaled for the first time
that he could support ending the travel ban "at
an appropriate time.''
But Roger Noriega, the recently confirmed assistant
secretary of state for hemispheric affairs, said
after he addressed the committee that President
Bush "will veto any measure to change the
current restrictions.''
Lugar's cautious statement calling for a reexamination
of U.S. policy appeared to reflect pressure from
some farm-state Republican senators who would
like to end the embargo altogether.
The Senate may vote this fall on a proposal,
which passed the House last month, to ease the
U.S. ban on travel to Cuba.
Several previous congressional attempts at easing
the travel restrictions to Cuba have failed.
Lugar said that ''current Cuba strategy has not
worked'' and said the United States must do a
better job of working with European and Latin
American nations to support change in Cuba.
''We must think beyond our fruitless war of attrition
that has only served to make Castro a folk hero
in some parts of the world,'' said the senator,
adding that Cuba was a distraction from other
Latin issues "of equal or greater importance.''
The hearing was the first time Noriega appeared
to testify before lawmakers since being sworn
in to his new post on Sept. 9.
In his remarks, which were limited almost entirely
to Cuba, Noriega said any easing of travel restrictions
would be "a risky proposition, the price
for which the Cuban people would pay.''
''Now is not the time to be experimenting with
perhaps well-meaning but fundamentally misguided
new tactics in Cuba which we believe would strengthen
the regime, not move forward the day of fundamental
reform,'' Noriega said.
Herald staff writer Frank Davies contributed
to this report.
Lula: I spoke to Castro about human rights
Agence France-Presse
BRASILIA - Brazilian President Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva insisted Thursday that he spoke
with Cuban President Fidel Castro about human-rights
during a visit to communist-run Cuba last week.
''I have spent my entire life fighting to defend
democratic freedoms,'' said da Silva, who was
criticized for not meeting publicly with dissidents
in the Americas' only communist state. "Cuba
has its arguments, the United States has its arguments,
but what is up to me is simply to tell a head
of state how I think things should be.''
''I spoke for almost two hours privately about
human rights and the issue of prisoners in Cuba,''
da Silva added, referring to Cuba's latest crackdown
on opponents of the Castro regime.
The United States and the European Union have
stepped up criticism of Havana's human-rights
record, especially the April crackdown, the toughest
in years, which saw 75 dissidents jailed for up
to 28 years.
Cuban government shot down, executed my dad,
daughter says
The child of a Bay of Pigs pilot files suit
against Fidel Castro and the island nation under
an anti-terrorism act.
By Luisa Yanez.lyanez@herald.com.
Posted on Fri, Oct. 03, 2003
CIA pilot Thomas ''Pete'' Ray believed he was
fighting communism and helping Cuban exiles overthrow
Fidel Castro when he signed up for the ill-fated
1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
Ray, 30, was shot down, captured and eventually
killed by a bullet to the right temple -- a bullet
fired at close range, not in the randomness of
battle -- an autopsy done years later revealed.
Ray's death is the crux of the wrongful death
lawsuit filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court Thursday
by his daughter, who says her father was executed
by the Cuban government, maybe on the order of
Fidel Castro or his brother, Raul.
''They killed my father, I have no doubt of it,''
said Janet Ray Weininger, 49, of Southwest Miami-Dade,
who stood by the Bay of Pigs memorial in Little
Havana as she announced her plans to seek both
punitive and compensatory damages in a suit that
cites her father's motivation for participating
in the invasion.
Ray Weininger joins a handful of relatives of
victims of Castro's regime who have sued Cuba
under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty
Act of 1996, which allows victims of designated
terrorist states to sue for damages.
Millions have been sought and won, the money
coming from frozen Cuban assets or diverted from
telephone payments for the island.
For Ray's daughter, who was 6 when he died, the
lawsuit is the latest action in a three-decade
battle. At age 15, Ray Weininger wrote the first
of some 2,000 letters to Castro asking for the
return of her father's remains, which Cuba kept
for years as an odd trophy, frozen in a morgue.
Cuba relented in 1979. He is buried in his native
Alabama.
Ray had been recruited by the CIA from the Alabama
National Air Guard to help Cuban exiles in the
mission. Thursday, some of them spoke on his behalf.
''I'm here to say that he was there and he was
a hero,'' said Mario Zuniga, 78, a Bay of Pigs
pilot.
Oscar Martinez Roij, 75, the pilots' air controller
that day -- April 19, 1961 -- said he remembers
hearing Ray's plane had been hit.
"There was no transmission from him, but
I heard from another pilot who saw Ray's plane
that he was going to crash-land.''
From witness reports, the family has pieced together
what happened. Ray and his co-pilot crash-landed
and ran. They came under fire and were shot several
times. Ray's autopsy showed other bullet wounds.
Ray was captured and taken to a medical facility.
''While the Cuban doctors were treating Ray,
Fidel Castro's Army carried out orders of Fidel
and Raul Castro and summarily executed Pete Ray
with a single shot to his right temple,'' the
lawsuit alleges.
Other similar lawsuits have been successful.
In April, the family of Howard F. Anderson, an
American businessman executed more than four decades
ago by Castro's forces, won a $67 million judgment
against the Cuban government.
In 2001, a Miami-Dade Circuit judge ordered the
Cuban government to pay $27 million to Ana Margarita
Martinez, the jilted Miami wife of a Cuban spy,
declaring that Cuba orchestrated his sham marriage
so he could infiltrate the Miami exile community.
In the most famous and most successful case,
a Miami federal judge ordered Cuba to pay $187
million to relatives of three Brothers to the
Rescue fliers shot down by Castro's Air Force
over the Florida Straits in 1996.
The relatives collected half of that award.
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