Spain's top anti-terrorism court Thursday rejected a complaint filed by Cuban dissidents against Cuban President Fidel Castro and former tourism minister Osmani Cienfuegos for genocide, terrorism and torture, according to dpa. The same complaint had earlier been rejected several times, the National Court said. The Committee of Help to Dissent 2506 accused Castro and Cienfuegos of crimes against humanity. The complaint was based on the deaths of nine participants in the US-fuelled Bay of Pigs invasion attempt in 1961. The nine were caught and died of suffocation inside a lorry transporting them to a prison in Havana. The dissidents accused Cienfuegos, who was also travelling on the lorry, and Castro of responsibility for the prisoners' fate. In 2005, the National Court rejected a similar complaint against Castro, Cienfuegos, Castro's brother Raul and diplomat Carlos Amat. The case did not contain evidence of a genocide, a state could not be charged with terrorism, and the alleged torture could only be classified as degrading treatment, judge Ismael Moreno argued at the time. The dissidents refiled the complaint in the hope that Castro's illness and partial incapacity to carry out his tasks would strip him of judicial immunity as head of state. The court, however, considered that Castro remained the Cuban head of state. The Spanish judiciary regards itself as competent to judge human- rights violations committed in other countries. The best-known such cases include the unsuccessful attempt by judge Baltasar Garzon to extradite former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998.
