By RACHEL LA CORTE
Associated Press

MIAMI -- The lone survivor of the 1996 shoot down of two planes by Cuban fighter jets has asked a U.S. court to award him nearly $76
million in damages from the Castro government.

Jose Basulto, founder of the Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue, filed documents last week asking for the amount, saying he deserved
$5,000 a day for the rest of his life for the mental pain and suffering the shoot down has caused him. He based his request on U.S.
government actuarial tables that predict he'll live until 2037.

Basulto received a judgment against the communist government and its air force in January when they failed to show up in court and defend
themselves against his suit. It was filed under a 1996 federal law that helps victims of terrorism sue foreign governments that support such
violence.

Basulto said Monday that he doesn't expect that he'll every collect the $75.9 million, but that his case is still a strike against Cuban President
Fidel Castro.

``It's another reminder to the people of the United States that justice has not been done,'' Basulto said. ``The indictment of Fidel Castro
should be on criminal grounds, not civil grounds.''

The Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down by two Cuban MiGs in February 1996 over international waters as they searched for
migrant rafters. Four men on the planes died. Basulto, flying solo on a third plane, was not hit. On several flights before that day, the group
had violated Cuba's airspace and dropped leaflets supporting human rights over the island. The group halted its flying operations earlier this
year, citing costs.

The families of three of the slain flyers, Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos Costa and Mario de la Pena, sued under the federal law and won
$188 million in damages in 1997. In April 2000, a judge awarded them $38 million from frozen U.S. bank accounts belonging to Cuban
telephone companies.

The family of the fourth man, Pablo Morales, could not sue because he was not a U.S. citizen.

Basulto has said he will donate all money he receives to Cuban dissident groups.

``It's not my money, it's the money of the Cuban people,'' he said.

A call placed Monday to the Cuban Interests Section in Washington was not returned.

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