The sister of a young Cuban dissident summarily executed earlier this month on the direct orders of Fidel Castro is suing the communist dictator for wrongful death.
Judicial Watch, the public-interest legal group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption and abuse, filed the lawsuit on behalf of Yordanis Montoya Isaac against Castro, the Republic of Cuba and Castro’s brother, Raul, who serves as chief of the Cuban Armed Forces. The Cuban Armed Forces are also named as defendants for carrying out the execution.
Jorge Luis Martinez Isaac is one of three men executed by a firing squad for unsuccessfully attempting to hijack a Cuban passenger ferry to Florida a few weeks ago.
In addition to wrongful death under the Alien Tort Claims Act, the lawsuit charges the defendants with crimes against humanity; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment;
and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
“Jorge Luis Martinez Isaac simply wanted a better life and an opportunity to be with his family in America – he paid for that desire with his life,” said Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel
Larry Klayman.
Under cover of the war in Iraq, the Cuban government began a massive crackdown on Cuban dissidents earlier this month, arresting some 75 government opponents, human-rights activists and independent journalists, and sentencing them to prison terms of up to 28 years.
On Tuesday, the Bush administration weighed in on the recent escalation of repression.
“When you look at what they have done in recent weeks and recent months with respect to stifling dissent, with respect to arresting people and sentencing them to long years in prison, in jail, just for expressing a point of view that is different from that of Fidel Castro, it should be an outrage to everyone,” said Secretary of State Colin Powell. “It should be an outrage to every leader in this hemisphere, every leader in this world.”
Powell called on Castro to free the “prisoners of conscience” and said the U.S. will back Cubans who seek peaceful change.
The New York Times reports U.S. officials are considering a series of steps to punish Cuba, including cutting off cash payments to relatives in Cuba or halting direct flights to the island.
Meanwhile, a 53-nation panel on human rights gave the Cuban regime what amounts to a slap on the wrist yesterday. The United Nations Human Rights Commission adopted a resolution that calls on Cuba to allow a monitor selected by the panel to visit the country to assess human-rights conditions.
The panel stopped short of a full rebuke. Members voted down an amendment to express ”deep concern” over the arrests and call for the immediate release of jailed dissidents.
The Judicial Watch lawsuit got a boost by a Miami-Dade Circuit Court judge’s ruling yesterday, which ordered the Cuban government to pay the widow and four children of a dissident executed by firing squad four decades ago $67 million.
Castro was already on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages owed to the jilted Miami wife of a Cuban spy, and to the relatives of three exiles whose search-and-rescue planes were shot down by Cuban MiG fighter jets.
Damages soon will be awarded to another Judicial Watch plaintiff over that Feb. 24, 1996, shoot-down incident.
As WorldNetDaily reported, Judicial Watch filed suit last May on behalf of Jos? Basulto, founder and president of the Miami-based humanitarian group Brothers To The Rescue, or BTTR.
Basulto is a survivor of the attack by Cuban Air Force fighter jets on three unarmed, civilian aircraft operated by BTTR in international airspace over the Florida Straits. Two aircraft were shot down by Castro’s MiGs, resulting in the deaths of Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario De La Pena, Carlos Costa and Pablo Morales.
The suit was filed under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which enables suits for money damages against foreign states that cause “personal injury or death that
was caused by an act of … extrajudicial killing, aircraft sabotage … or the provision of material support or resources for such an act.”
Cuba maintains U.S. courts have no jurisdiction.
Basulto won the case by default because neither Castro nor his legal representatives responded to the legal action by the given deadline. In February, a federal court in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., heard testimony by Basulto and his wife in the damages phase of a lawsuit that seeks in excess of $40 million.
Klayman plans to enforce the award against the frozen assets of the Cuban government in the U.S. and said, if necessary, he would attach accounts of American companies that are doing
business with Castro – like travel agencies.
“I hope [the suit] accomplishes first of all another public indictment of Castro for what he’s done so he appears as the criminal and terrorist he is,” Basulto told WND.
Judicial Watch is also suing Castro in the Belgian Royal Courts for crimes against humanity.
“In the past few weeks, Fidel Castro has dropped his mask and reminded the world of the brutal dictatorship he runs in Cuba,” said Klayman. “We need not look far and wide, or around the globe for terrorists and repressive tyrants. Castro has a 44-year-long, documented record and he’s only 90 miles from the United States. After Saddam and Syria, he should be the next to go.”
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