Since 2016, numerous US diplomats in Havana have been complaining about mysterious headaches, hearing loss, dizziness and nausea. Similar complaints are later reported elsewhere in the world. Secret services have been investigating the incidents for years – but the disease remains a mystery.
According to media reports, the US secret services do not assume that a “foreign adversary” is responsible for the so-called Havana syndrome among American diplomats. This is the preliminary conclusion of years of intelligence investigations into the mysterious illnesses of embassy staff, the Washington Post reported, citing secret service employees. There is still no plausible explanation for the cases. It was a frustrating “puzzle,” the newspaper quoted an employee as saying. The secret services are open to new ideas and evidence.
Since 2016, numerous US diplomats living in Havana, Cuba, and their families have complained of mysterious headaches, hearing loss, dizziness and nausea. The embassy staff was then reduced to a minimum. Similar complaints were later reported elsewhere in the world. The US government has not ruled out that this could be some kind of attack – but it has always emphasized that it does not know what is behind it.
According to the Washington Post, seven US secret services have now checked well over a thousand cases in almost a hundred countries. Five of those authorities concluded that it was “very unlikely” that a foreign adversary using an energy source was responsible for the symptoms. One of the authorities committed to the rating “unlikely”, another abstained.
Last year, an independent panel of experts came to the conclusion that some cases of Havana syndrome could have been triggered by some kind of targeted use of electromagnetic radiation. However, the CIA, the foreign intelligence service, said at the time that it could not be assumed that a global campaign by a foreign country was responsible for the mysterious diseases.
Many of those affected claim that they were the victims of a premeditated attack. Again and again, Russia is mentioned as a possible cause of the complaints. According to the Washington Post, the current report almost completely contradicts this thesis. The diplomats concerned have repeatedly accused the US government of downplaying the symptoms.
