Netflix Sued for Defamation, Accused of Vilifying Cuban Exile Group in 2020 Film 'Wasp Network'

[Judi Lynn]

(Missed this information last year, just saw it tonight. )

Plaintiff Jose Basulto says the movie willfully painted his anti-Castro nonprofit Brothers to the Rescue as “terrorists” and “criminals”

Jose Basulto

Josh Dickey
June 14, 2022 @ 9:13 AM
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A prominent Cuban exile and anti-Castro activist has sued Netflix for defamation, claiming the 2020 film “The Wasp Network” – marketed heavily as being “based on a true story” – defamed him and his organization by portraying them as “terrorists and criminals” while glorifying communist spies.

The plaintiff, Jose Basulto, was a CIA-trained anti-communist activist, pilot and dissident leader who escaped Cuba to fight the Castro regime. In the early 1990s, he started Brothers to the Rescue, a Florida-based nonprofit that flew seaplanes to assist refugees struggling in open water; the Cuban government called those airspace violations “terrorist acts,” and even shot down two aircraft in 1996.

“The Wasp Network” focuses on “The Cuban Five,” a group of nationalist spies dispatched by the Cuban Ministry to oppose and sabotage anti-regime groups like Brothers to the Rescue. It was released June 19, 2020, on Netflix worldwide. Penelope Cruz, Gael Garcia Bernal, Edgar Ramirez and Ana de Armas make up the top-billed cast; Basulto is played by Leonardo Sbaraglia.

“The Film romanticizes, or glorifies, the criminal activity conducted by spies of Cuba’s Ministry of the Interior, i.e., the ‘Cuban Five,’ whose espionage work was responsible for the death of four Americans in 1996, as being based on ‘True Events,’” reads the lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Florida.

More:
https://www.thewrap.com/netflix-sued-defamation-cuban-exile-wasp-network/