$90 million in Cuban assets go to families of executed men

$90 million in Cuban assets go to families of executed men
POSTED: 10:49 p.m. EST, November 17, 2006

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The families of two men executed by Fidel Castro's
government will receive more than $90 million in Cuban assets held in
the United States, a federal judge ruled Friday.

Howard Anderson was arrested in April 1961 and accused by the Cuban
government of smuggling guns to anti-Communist rebels a few days before
the Bay of Pigs invasion by some 1,500 U.S.-backed expatriates.

During the attack, Cuban troops shot down two B-26 bombers operated by
the CIA in support of the landing at the Bay of Pigs on Cuba's
southwestern coast.

Thomas "Pete" Ray, 30, a CIA contractor, was one of four B-26 airmen
killed in the attack.

Ray, a pilot with the Alabama National Guard, was shot by Cuban troops
after his plane crash landed. Anderson was executed by a firing squad in
the days following the invasion.

"I just wish this had come a month earlier," Anderson's daughter and
former CNN correspondent Bonnie Anderson said.

"We are distraught. We lost our mother one month ago. We so hoped that
she would live long enough to see this final payment."

In 1996, Congress passed a law allowing U.S. citizens to file domestic
lawsuits against foreign countries in terrorism cases.

The law was aimed at benefiting the families of four men who died that
year when Cuban jets shot down planes flown by a group called Brothers
to the Rescue -- activists known for flying missions to rescue Cuban
refugees at sea.

The Brothers to the Rescue families wound up collecting a total of about
$97 million from dozens of frozen Cuban accounts held in U.S. banks.

Their success prompted the families of Anderson and Ray to seek other
Cuban assets, which were frozen under the Cuban embargo imposed by the
Eisenhower administration in 1960.

The Anderson and Ray cases were later joined by U.S. District Judge
Victor Marrero, who issued the ruling Friday.

"The final measure of justice comes with Fidel Castro paying for what he
did," Bonnie Anderson said. "It seems a hollow victory because Mother
cannot share it with us."

Anderson's family has acknowledged that he may have carried CIA messages
to anti-Castro groups in Havana, although they say he was not a paid
American intelligence agent.

At the time of his arrest, his family has said, he was in Cuba only to
prevent the expropriation of his family's businesses.

"I'm 51," Bonnie Anderson said. "My father was killed when I was 5. I
have waited my lifetime to see this measure of justice."

The Bay of Pigs invasion was an abortive attempt by Cuban exiles, backed
by the CIA, to overthrow Castro, who had himself led the overthrow of
dictator Fulgencio Batista two years earlier.

Some 1,100 exiles were captured within days of the April 17 landing.
Castro returned most of them to the United States several years later in
exchange for $53 million in food and medicine, according to Encyclopedia
Britannica.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/11/17/cuba.suit/index.html