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BOSTON - A Maine woman is suing Cuban leader Fidel Castro over the capture and death of her father, a pilot believed to have vanished over Cuba four decades ago, the clerk's office at a Maine court said today.
The suit filed by Sherry Sullivan in May and sent to Cuba this week names Fidel Castro, his brother and acting president Raul Castro, along with the Republic of Cuba for the wrongful death of Geoffrey Francis Sullivan.
In court papers filed in Maine's Waldo County Superior Court, Sullivan said her father had been involved "in various anti-Castro covert operations in Central America and Cuba" before disappearing while flying over Cuba in 1963.
It said he "was shot down over Cuba in the course of a covert mission against Castro regime and was and had been imprisoned by the Castro regime in Cuba."
Geoffrey Sullivan has been declared dead by US authorities, according to the suit, which seeks unspecified damages.
Sparked by a US law passed in 1996, several wrongful death cases have been brought against Cuba in US courts including over the deaths of an American executed for smuggling arms into Cuba and a CIA pilot shot down over Cuba in the Bay of Pigs operation.
Victims' families have won damage awards, some of which have been paid from frozen Cuban accounts in US banks, but US media reports have said that this money, which totalled as much as US$268 million ($337.99 million) at one point according to the Miami Herald, is now almost all gone.
- REUTERS
