HAVANA (AP) -- Cuban officials have filed a lawsuit demanding $181 billion from the U.S. government for damages that Cuba says it has suffered in U.S. attacks over the past four decades, the Communist Party daily Granma reported Tuesday.
The lawsuit filed Monday on behalf of women's, small farmers and other groups was in response to a U.S. federal court judge's demand that the Cuban government pay the families of three of four civilian pilots killed in a shootdown off the island's coast in 1996.The tribunal said that the U.S. government had caused far more death and damage with incursions into Cuban territory and attacks on diplomatic missions and aircraft in the past 40 years.
The tribunal said the $181 billion was the total cost of damages suffered by the families of 3,478 Cubans killed and another 2,099 left disabled.
Many of the attacks date back to the 1960s, including the ill-fated assault on the Bay of Pigs in 1961 by a group of Cuban exiles. The most recent attacks mentioned were the bombing of several Havana hotels in 1997 by a pair of Salvadorans, who the Cuban government claims were recruited by U.S. exiles.