The French film Wasp Network was never popular in Miami for obvious reasons, as it depicts the activities of a Cuban espionage network in South Florida.
The film focuses entirely on anti-Castro exiles. One of them, the leader of Brothers to the Rescue, José Basulto, has just sued Netflix, its distributor, and its production team.
“Basulto is falsely portrayed as the leader and recruiter of a terrorist organization that actively participates in and coordinates terrorist and drug trafficking activities,” says the text of the lawsuit, filed in a Miami federal court.
The film, which since its premiere in June 2020 has been seen by 192 million viewers, is announced on the Netflix site as “a true and exciting story in which Cuban spies infiltrate exile groups in the 1990s to stop terrorism against the island, at a high personal cost.”
Basulto’s lawsuit comes two years after another lawsuit filed by Ana Margarita Martínez, who was the couple of the spy Juan Pablo Roque. Martínez sued the streaming company for discrediting her reputation by showing her as a person of alleged “immoral sexual behavior” leading a life of luxury, with money from drug trafficking and terrorist activities, according to the letter sent by her lawyers.
“Basulto is suing Netflix because there was malice on the part of the company. His reputation has suffered because the film accuses him of something very ugly, of being a terrorist and a drug trafficker,” León Hirzel, lawyer for Basulto and Martínez, told the Miami Herald newspaper, indicating that Martínez’s case is progressing very well and that a strategy was elaborated two years ago.
The film focuses on the work of five Cubans who received long prison sentences for their activities in the United States. In Cuba they are known as the Five Heroes: Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Fernando González, René González and Antonio Guerrero.
Author
Rui Ferreira
