Posted on 03/10/2003 11:49:32 PM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
After nearly 42 years of waiting, the family of an executed American businessman may finally receive compensation from Cuba for his death.
The family's claim stemming from the torture and death of Howard Anderson is one of many such claims dating back to the revolution of the late 1950s. Anderson was convicted of aiding counterrevolutionaries.
If the family receives compensation, it could be one of the few families to do so using a 1996 U.S. law that allows individuals to sue other countries for murder and acts of terrorism.
The Andersons, including two who live in the Houston area, won a default judgment in January in a Miami court after alleging wrongful death and torture.
The Anderson heirs won the judgment after Cuban officials did not appear in the Miami courtroom
Today and Wednesday, the Anderson family plans to return to a Miami courtroom to make its case to receive compensation for the loss of Howard Anderson's life and the loss of the family's businesses and properties in Cuba.
"The money part, sure, that would be nice," said Lee Anderson, now a 50-year-old Spanish teacher at Pasadena's Sam Rayburn High School.
The Cuban government was accused of executing Howard Anderson for a crime that carried a maximum nine-year prison sentence under Cuban law, his son Gary Anderson said.
No evidence was presented against him during his trial, according to the family's lawsuit.
The Andersons, and others, hope to tap a fund holding an estimated $150 million of Cuban assets frozen in U.S. bank accounts after Fidel Castro took control.
The United States seized the funds after President Kennedy severed economic ties with the country.
So far, $99 million of that money has been doled out to the families of three pilots the Cuban military shot down. The pilots were volunteers for Brothers to the Rescue, a group that searches for Cuban rafters off the coast of Florida. The U.S. government condemned the attack as an act of terrorism, and the families of the victims later won a judgment against Cuba.
However, even after that judgment, the money was still frozen because the U.S. government planned to continue to use it as a bargaining chip in dealings with the island nation.
While many exiles have filed claims against Cuba, the families of the three pilots are the only ones to ever receive compensation for their losses. Each family received $33 million.
The Andersons could be the next family to be compensated.
"If you want to hurt terrorism, let's hurt Fidel and hit him in the pocket," said Gary Anderson, a 57-year-old owner of a power equipment business in Houston.
Robert Muse, a Washington, D.C., attorney who represents several of the companies with claims against Cuba believes the Anderson family will receive money this week.
To get to Castro's pocketbook, Dorothy McCarthy, Howard Anderson's former wife and now 81, and her four adult children will for the first time hear a Cuban exile who watched the trial recount the last days of their father's life.
While they have read a Swiss diplomat's records and notes and letters from Howard Anderson, they've never seen anyone tell the story of that 1961 trial leading to his execution by a Cuban firing squad.
McCarthy learned she was a widow while listening to a Cuban radio station.
Only a few weeks before, they had spoken to Howard Anderson for the last time when they called him from Miami and wished him a happy birthday on March 13, 1961.
The family had fled Cuba for Miami in the summer of 1960.
Yet Howard Anderson had returned to Cuba temporarily and felt safe in the country he had lived for 14 years.
He was there to check on the people at his service stations, boat-building business and Jeep dealership, before rejoining his family in Miami. Castro was nationalizing most of the businesses in Cuba at that time and would soon do the same with Howard Anderson's holdings.
Three days after he spoke with his family, Howard Anderson was arrested at one of his Havana gas stations. His family knew nothing of his whereabouts for nearly a month.
By 1971, the Andersons and another 5,910 families and corporations filed claims against the Cuban government to recover assets they lost after Castro took power, nationalizing industries and distributing homes of the wealthy to Cuba's poor. In all, claims worth $1.9 billion were filed. Companies such as King Ranch, Texaco and Borden all filed claims with the U.S. government.
The Andersons and most other Cuban-Americans figured they would receive no money until Castro was out of office and the United States restored normal trade with Cuba.
Then they found out about the 1996 law and the Brothers to the Rescue winning its case. They filed a wrongful death suit in December 2001.
Gary Anderson believes that if the court considers how much his father would have earned if he had not been executed, they would come up with a judgment of about $12 million.
"I know we'll never get him back, but I think we need to put Cuba, and especially Fidel, on notice that this was wrong," said Lee Anderson, who lives in League City.
U.S. lawmakers request public meeting in Cuba*** HAVANA - (AP) -- Eight American lawmakers working to change U.S. policies toward Cuba said Monday they will ask the communist government to let as many as 25 U.S. Congress members hold a public meeting with the Cuban people later this year. ''It would be a demonstration of American democracy,'' said U.S. Congressman William Delahunt, a Democrat.
Ideally, Delahunt said, the gathering -- commonly known in the United States as a ''town hall'' meeting -- would be broadcast live on Cuban television and radio across the island, just as former President Jimmy Carter's speech to the Cuban people was aired live last year. ''It is time to forget the rancor, the bitterness of the past,'' Delahunt told a news conference. He said it was time to ''have a civil and respectful discourse'' between the two nations.***
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