Cuba rules US guilty in anti-embargo lawsuit HAVANA: Cuba, pursuing a largely symbolic domestic lawsuit against Washington for 40 years of economic sanctions, declared the US government ``guilty'' on Sunday and ordered it to pay $121 billion in compensation. Washington had ignored the suit, which was filed in a Cuban court in January by pro-government groups representing different sectors of Cuban society. US officials dismissed it privately as having little international legal weight. The Cuban lawsuit sought compensation for direct and indirect economic losses it said were caused by the long-running US economic embargo. It also denounced aggression against Cuba it alleged was organised, carried out and promoted by the US government. Cuba's communist party daily Granma published the court's decision on Sunday in a special 12-page supplement entitled Guilty. ``We rule ... Against the government of the United States of America,'' the five-member panel of judges said. The ruling, which noted the accused party had sent no defence attorneys, ordered Washington to pay $121 billion in compensation to the Cuban people. The decision followed a similar case last year in which the same Havana court upheld a $181.1 billion compensation claim against Washington for deaths and injuries blamed on the 40 years of US hostility toward Cuba. Foreign diplomats viewed both cases as part of a stepped-up political offensive by President Fidel Castro's government aimed at trying to change hostile US policy towards Cuba. This year's anti-embargo lawsuit became merged with Castro's nationwide patriotic crusade to seek the return of six-year-old Cuban shipwreck boy Elian Gonzalez. Elian is waiting with his father in the US while an appeals court rules on his future. As part of the Cuban case against the US embargo, dozens of witnesses from all sectors of the Caribbean Island's government and society gave hours of public testimony in February and march about alleged economic damages and personal injuries caused by hostile US government actions. In addition to the embargo, the testimony also alleged US aggression in the form of support for internal ``armed bands,'' promotion of foreign infiltrations, subversion, biological war, terrorism and sabotage. The evidence presented against Washington also listed hundreds of plans to assassinate Castro and other Cuban leaders, military and nuclear threats and the failed 1961 CIA-supported Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles. Adding to their symbolic weight, the court proceedings took place in Havana's revolution palace, seat of Cuba's government. Cuban leaders defended the lawsuit, saying that although it was unlikely to elicit any payments from Washington, it would serve as a reminder to Cubans and the world of how the island had been affected by US government policy since the 1959 Cuban revolution. (Reuters)
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