Canadian Government Accused of Covering Up “Havana Syndrome” Cases

Canadian diplomats accused their government of withholding information about mysterious brain injuries at the Canadian Embassy in Havana (_Tracy).

A group of 9 Canadian diplomats and their families alleged in a letter on April 21 that Global Affairs Canada, the country’s foreign ministry, is withholding information about new cases of “Havana Syndrome.” 

The Havana Syndrome refers to a mysterious streak of brain injuries that have affected employees at the embassies of Canada and the United States in Cuba. Diplomats and intelligence officers in Havana began experiencing sudden, intense headaches and bouts of dizziness in 2016, and over the following two years, 14 Canadian staff members and their families, as well as 26 Americans, reported symptoms ranging from migraines to nosebleeds, often paired with strange sounds. 

The authors of the letter, whose names are not publicly known, wrote that “the distortion of information misleads the public and causes significant risk to new personnel being sent to Cuba, as they are not being fully apprised of the risks to which they are exposed.” They assert that there have been at least three new cases of the illness since 2019, which contradicts the government’s claim that the last known incident occurred in November 2018.

In February 2019, the 14 afflicted Canadians filed a lawsuit asserting that their government had failed to protect them from what they described as “debilitating attacks” and claimed that Canadian officials had tried to prevent them from participating in a University of Pennsylvania study on the illness. That study later concluded that the 40 victims had physical damage to their brains that did not resemble other known forms of brain trauma. One plaintiff, known by the pseudonym Diplomat Allen, also alleged that in 2017, the Canadian ambassador to Cuba told him not to discuss the illnesses with other employees. 

The government responded to the lawsuit by claiming that their analysis found no external cause for the plaintiffs’ symptoms and that “there is no definitive medical diagnosis of any medical condition, illness or disease called Havana Syndrome.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in 2019 that Canada and Cuba would conduct a joint investigation, and that “we will continue to take very seriously the health and safety of all Canadians who serve anywhere overseas.”

While Canadian officials have hesitated to call cases of the strange disease “attacks,” the United States has been more forthcoming with theories. U.S. sources have variously attributed the victims’ symptoms to directed microwaves and possible sonic weapons, and claimed that Cuba, Russia, or China may be responsible. After removing half of its staff from its embassy in Cuba in January 2019, Global Affairs Canada held a briefing in February of this year in which it announced plans to increase the number of personnel there, reiterating its claim that there have been no new cases in over two years. 

Besides the alleged additional three cases claimed in the recent letter, U.S. federal agencies revealed on April 29 that they were investigating two possible “directed energy attacks” against White House officials on US soil in 2019 and 2020. These incidents, though still unconfirmed, could refute the Canadian government’s stance that the illnesses are not an ongoing problem, forcing American officials to side against their country’s neighbor and ally while it deals with dissent within its own diplomatic corps.