Jury Awards 253 Million in Wrongful Death Suit Against Cuba
A Florida jury awarded nearly $253 million to the children of a former friend of Fidel Castro who they said was tortured and killed in jail more than three decades ago - a verdict one juror said was meant as a political message.
The son and daughter of Rafael del Pino Siero, captured while trying to help a Cuban escape the country in 1959, expressed amazement at Friday’s award, which was five times more than what they had sought.
“I was flabbergasted,” Rafael Del Pino Jr. said. “I kept thinking why did they give us so much more?”
It appears to be the largest award to date in a wrongful death claim filed against the Cuban government in Miami. Cuba’s government was served with court papers but chose not to be represented in court.
The verdict is significantly more than the $187 million a federal judge awarded to the survivors of three victims in the 1996 shoot-down of two Brothers to the Rescue small planes by a Cuban MiG.
Those family members collected about half the judgment from Cuban assets frozen in New York, an option that probably won’t be available to Del Pino’s children. The assets are dwindling, and their father’s death came five years before the United States designated Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism.