The mysterious symptoms of the so-called Havana syndrome experienced by American diplomats in recent years have been linked to a Russian intelligence unit according to a joint investigation by several media published on Monday.
Havana syndrome was reported for the first time in 2016. American diplomats in Cuba’s capital fell ill and reported hearing piercing sounds at night.
These symptoms sparked speculation about a possible attack by a foreign entity with some kind of sonic weapon.
The journalistic investigation
The media The Insider, Der Spiegel and the CBS show “60 Minutes” They assure in their research that there is “evidence that suggests” that Havana syndrome is caused by “use of energy weapons directed brandished by members of unit 29155 (of the Russian GRU)“, according to the report.
Russia’s unit 29155 conducts operations abroad and has been blamed for several international incidents, including the attempted poisoning of defector Sergei Skripal in Britain in 2018.
Moscow assured on Monday that the report’s conclusions are “unfounded.”
“This issue has been talked about in the press for many years now. And from the beginning it has mostly been linked to the Russian side,” Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Peskov said at a press conference.
“But no one has published any convincing evidence so all this is nothing more than an unfounded and baseless accusation,” he said.
Washington closed its Havana immigration office in 2018 by virtue of a change in US policy towards Cuba and by the fear that the syndrome generated among diplomats.
US intelligence said in 2022 that the intense energy directed from an external source could have caused some of these symptoms, officially known as abnormal health incidents (AHI, for its acronym in English).
But US intelligence agencies concluded in March 2023 that “there is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or collection device that is causing AHIs.”
Washington announced the reopening of its immigration office in Havana in August 2023.
Other cases
The year-long media investigation suggests that those in Havana They were not the first cases of this syndrome: “It is likely that there were attacks two years earlier in Frankfurt, Germany, when an American government employee from the consulate he was knocked unconscious by something similar to a strong energy beam“.
The New Yorker reported in July 2021 that around twenty US intelligence agents, diplomats and other officials in Austria had denounced problems similar to Havana syndrome since President Joe Biden took office that same year.