Family of American executed in Cuba seeks $600 million in damages  Yahoo! News March 12, 2003

MIAMI, 12 (AP) - The family of an American businessman executed by a  Cuban firing squad at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion has asked a  judge for almost $600 million in damages from Cuba for his death.

"It's not the damages that matter to us," Bonnie Anderson, daughter of  the slain businessman Howard Anderson, said after a trial in Miami  Wednesday.

"We don't know whether we'll ever be able to collect anything. It's to have a judge say that Howard Anderson was murdered and that he is getting  justice in an American court," said Bonnie Anderson, who was 5 when her father  was killed in 1961.

The Anderson family filed a lawsuit two years ago against Cuba based  on a 1996 act that lets Americans sue foreign countries or individuals responsible for terrorism.

Cuban President Fidel Castro and his government are ignoring the suit,  as they have done in similar cases.

The family won a default judgment in February and the damages trial  ended Wednesday. Judge Ellen Leesfield's ruling was not expected for  several weeks.

Anderson, 41, had lived and worked in Cuba for years when he was  charged with conspiracy during the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. He was sentenced to death April 18. An appeal was quickly rejected and he and eight  others defendants were shot at dawn the following day.

Leesfield said Anderson's family deserves damages because he was not  given a proper trial. "His execution was tantamount to a killing outside the  realm of any civilized law," she said.

Scott Leeds, a lawyer for the Anderson family, asked Leesfield for an award totaling $593.5 million.

Anderson's widow, Dorothy Anderson McCarthy, and their four children  had moved to Miami in late 1960 fearing reprisals from the Castro  government. He remained in Havana to take care of the family's businesses.

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