Judge awards $1.2 billion to ex-CIA operative in suit against Cuba

A Florida judge awarded nearly $1.2 billion on Friday to a Cuban American former CIA operative who hunted revolutionary Che Guevara, in a lawsuit he brought against Cuba over the suicide death of his father. The award eclipses past judgments against the Cuban government handed down by courts in Miami, the heart of Cuban exile opposition to the island's communist leadership. But it was not immediately clear if the judgment could be collected. Gustavo Villoldo, now in his 70s, blamed Guevara, former Cuban president Fidel Castro and others for the death of his father, who killed himself in 1959 after the family's property was seized in the wake of Castro's revolution. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Peter Adrien awarded Villoldo damages of $1.179 billion, a court official said. "You have brought closure to us after 50 years. Justice has prevailed," the Miami Herald quoted Villoldo as saying following the verdict. Villoldo's attorneys told the Herald they would try to collect the judgment from frozen assets belonging to the Cuban government. But their prospects for success were uncertain. The frozen accounts in the United States have been depleted by past judgments. The award far surpassed a judgment of $253 million last year in a wrongful death case brought against Cuba by the family of Rafael del Pino Siero, a U.S. citizen who was a friend of Fidel Castro but turned against him after Castro took power in 1959. Castro's forces captured del Pino Siero and he died in a Cuban prison cell 18 years later. The award to del Pino's children bested a $188 million judgment for the relatives of three people killed when a Cuban military jet shot down two small planes belonging to the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue in 1996. Villoldo is a former CIA operative who participated in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and later helped hunt down Guevara in the jungles of Bolivia. The bearded revolutionary was captured and killed by CIA-backed Bolivian soldiers in October 1967. Villoldo has said he personally supervised the burial of Guevara's body and cut off a lock of Guevara's hair, which he kept for decades. The hair and related items were sold at auction for $119,500 in October 2007. Guevara, a leading figure of the Cuban revolution, became an international icon of rebellion for generations of leftists. The Cuban government recovered what it said were Guevara's remains from Bolivia more than a decade ago and buried them at a monument in Santa Clara, Cuba.