MIAMI — The family of an American killed by a Cuban firing squad in 1961 filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in hopes of winning financial damages under a 5-year-old federal law.
"I'm angry," Bonnie Anderson said in announcing the lawsuit recently with her mother, sister and two brothers. "We're all older than he was when he was killed."
The Andersons moved to Cuba in 1947, but most of the family left in 1960 after the Cuban revolution. At the time, Howard Anderson stayed behind to run the family's service stations.
In 1961, he was accused of smuggling arms into Cuba.
His trial started on the same day as the Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles backed by the United States, and Anderson was executed two days later. He was 41.
A Swiss diplomat who attended the trial said the prosecutor was "flinging himself about like a madman and passionately demanding the death sentence" even though the crime carried a maximum nine-year sentence, the lawsuit said. Anti-aircraft fire and air raid sirens could be heard in the courtroom.
The lawsuit in state court is based on a U.S. law that allowed the families of three U.S. fliers killed when their planes were shot down over Cuba in 1996 to recover $97 million in Cuban funds from frozen U.S. accounts.
The Cuban government will be served with a copy of the new lawsuit through diplomatic channels, said Fernando Zulueta, the Andersons' attorney. He said he hoped the case could come to trial in four to six months.