U.S. Approves Payment of Frozen Cuban Assets to Relatives of Brothers to Rescue

On February 12, 2001, the U.S. Government authorized the transfer of $93 million in frozen Cuban assets to compensate three Miami families who received a wrongful-death verdict against Cuba for the shoot-down of two exile planes in 1996. The bank transfer was scheduled for February 16 and will include $58 million in compensatory damages for the relatives of the three Brothers to the Rescue pilots brought down over international waters on February 24, 1996, and an additional $35 million in court-imposed sanctions against the Cuban Government. The authorization of the payments brings to a close the legal controversy between the Clinton administration and the families’ lawyers over collection of a 1997 federal court judgment in Miami…[more]