Widow of dissident killed in Cuba sues former U.S. diplomat who admits being Cuban agent

The widow of Oswaldo Payá, a prominent Cuban opposition leader who is widely believed to have died in a car crash caused by Cuban state security officials, filed a civil lawsuit in Miami on Thursday against Victor Manuel Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador who has agreed to plead guilty to charges of acting as an unregistered agent of Cuba, including at the time of Payá’s death in 2012.

“I seek what I have sought all along: for the truth, for justice, and for the regime and its accomplices to stop acting with impunity,” Ofelia Acevedo said in a statement.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Miami-Dade circuit court, seeks compensation for the wrongful death of Payá, which it claims was “a direct and proximate result of [Rocha’s] actions as a covert agent for the Cuban terrorist dictatorship.”

Payá, the founder of the Christian Liberation Movement, won international recognition for his work defending human rights, opposing Fidel Castro and promoting the Varela Project, an attempt to use Cuba’s constitution to promote civil and political liberties on the island. For that work, several dissidents linked to the project were arrested in 2003. Payá was not imprisoned, but he and his family faced constant harassment that ended with his death in a car crash in July 2012.

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In a landmark conclusion after a delayed investigation spanning a decade, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organization of American States, said the Cuban government bears responsibility for Payá’s death and that it was politically motivated. The commission said there was “serious and sufficient evidence to conclude that state agents participated” in his death and that of a fellow member of the Christian Liberation Movement, Harold Cepero, who was also in the car.

“Mr. Payá posed one of the most legitimate and serious threats to Fidel Castro’s dictatorship. For this, Fidel and Raul Castro ordered Mr. Payá’s murder,” the lawsuit filed Thursday says. “The assassination could not have been undertaken by the Cuban dictatorship with impunity absent the aid and comfort [Rocha] provided to the regime.”

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Rocha, a former U.S. ambassador to Bolivia who held positions at the U.S. embassy in Havana and the National Security Council during his long career in the foreign service, was a special advisor to the head of the Pentagon’s Southern Command, based in Doral, at the time of Payá’s death.

He was arrested in December after an FBI sting operation in which he was recorded admitting he worked for Cuban intelligence for over 40 years, according to the criminal complaint. In a hearing Thursday in Miami federal court, Rocha agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to be an illegal agent and acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government in a deal that will be unveiled on April 12, when he will be sentenced. The charges carried a possible sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

In the most direct accusation against the former U.S. diplomat, Acevedo’s lawsuit says the Cuban government “used the intelligence, aid, and comfort provided by Defendant to unlawfully assassinate Mr. Payá.”

The lawsuit also cites Cuba’s inclusion on a U.S. State Department list of countries that sponsor terrorism to argue that the death of Payá intended to intimidate the Cuban population and that Rocha “conspired with the Cuban dictatorship to promote and carry out its terrorist activities, including the Cuban government’s assassination of Mr. Payá.”

Carlos Trujillo, the former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States and currently a lawyer with the Florida firm Continental, is leading the legal team working pro-bono to represent Acevedo. He says his team has further information, including secret embassy cables sent to the Southern Command about Payás work at the time Rocha was an advisor there, and other confidential sources that could help tie Rocha´s covert activities to the dissident’s death.

“Rocha is also going to be deposed on our case, and we are going to ask him point blank on multiple issues,” Trujillo told the Herald.

While there have been other prominent cases of U.S. officials and others spying for Cuba over the years, lawsuits against those found spying for foreign governments are rare. But Rocha is a wealthy target because he had a profitable career in the private sector after he left the State Department in 2002. He recently transferred title to four luxury condos in Brickell to his wife. After he pleads guilty, the government could seize any assets he acquired while conducting his covert activities on behalf of Cuba’s intelligence agencies.

Trujillo said the motive behind the lawsuit was not the money, “but for the family to get closure and know what happened to Mrs Payá’s husband.”

The filing of the lawsuit coincides with what would have been Payá’s birthday. He was 60 when he was killed.

“My father would have celebrated his 72nd birthday... on February 29,” said his daughter, Rosa María Payá, who has continued his work advocating for democracy in Cuba. “We remain steadfast in carrying on the work he initiated until the Cuban people achieve the freedom unjustly withheld from them by the regime and its accomplices.”