MEXICO CITY (AP) — A Mexican judge ruled that the plane involved in a 2018 crash in Cuba that killed 112 people suffered from severe maintenance failures and should never have flown, and ordered the owner to pay millions in damages to the families of the victims who sued.
According to court documents dated March 31 and seen Friday by The Associated Press, an independent expert determined the 2018 crash was an “institutional accident” caused by maintenance negligence. The expert’s report, which sided with the plaintiffs, described the pilots as a “final line of defense” who were tragically unable to prevent the low-altitude crash.
Based on these findings, the judge ordered Mexican charter Aerolíneas Damojh to pay $1.5 million in damages to each of the families of the four Mexican crew members who filed the initial lawsuit. The company failed to appear at trial and was tried in absentia. The aircraft’s insurer was also named in the lawsuit but was ultimately cleared of any financial penalties.
The Boeing 737 went down in a field moments after departing Havana’s José Martí International Airport, marking one of Cuba’s deadliest aviation disasters in decades. Of the 113 people on board, only a Cuban woman survived. Most of the victims were Cubans.
A year after the accident, Cuba attributed the tragedy to crew error. In Mexico, authorities had already temporarily suspended Aerolíneas Damojh, and opened an investigation. When contacted by the AP about the state of the investigation, Mexico’s Secretariat of Communications and Transportation did not respond.
Operating as Global Air, Damojh provided the Boeing 737 and the Mexican crew to the state carrier Cubana de Aviación through a lease agreement. This arrangement placed the aircraft in service despite a documented history of problems surrounding the company’s operations prior to the crash.
Samuel González, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, described the decision as a hard-won and “groundbreaking ruling for Mexico.” He said the court’s findings validate what the company’s own head of maintenance acknowledged on day one in Havana when he admitted to family members that the plane should never have been in the air.
“That plane flew over our heads for 10 years without maintenance,” González said. “It crashed in Cuba, but it could have happened anywhere.”
The AP was not immediately able to contact the airline representatives.
González noted that the airline appears to be filing for bankruptcy, adding, “If it’s a fraudulent bankruptcy, we will press charges for that as well.”
Beyond this initial lawsuit, González noted that a class-action civil suit representing all victims is underway. Simultaneously, a criminal complaint for homicide has been filed with Mexico's Office of the Attorney General against the company and any other responsible parties.
According to González, the criminal investigation has stalled because Cuban authorities have not provided requested information. The Attorney General’s Office did not immediately respond to the AP’s request for comment on the status of the case.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
FILE - Rescue teams search through the wreckage site of a Boeing 737 that plummeted into a cassava field with more than 100 passengers on board, in Havana, Cuba, May 18, 2018 . (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa, File)
ISLAMABAD (AP) — With the ceasefire in Iran still shaky, U.S. Vice President JD Vance headed Friday to Pakistan for high-level talks with Iranian officials, as Israel and Hezbollah militants traded fire and Tehran maintained its stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz.
Many issues could derail the truce and the negotiations aimed at making a broader deal to stop the fighting permanently.
Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim news agency, close to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, claimed that the talks set for Saturday would not happen unless Israel stopped its attacks in Lebanon. And U.S. President Donald Trump said on his social media platform that Iran has no leverage except to restrict ship traffic in the strait, through which 20% of the world’s traded oil once passed.
Kuwait, meanwhile, said it was targeted by seven drone attacks since Thursday that it blamed on Iran and its militia allies in the region. Though the Guard denied launching any assault, it has carried out attacks across the Mideast in the past that it did not claim.
Preparations for the talks between Iran and the U.S. appeared to be moving forward, with Vance boarding Air Force Two for the long flight to Islamabad.
Elsewhere, negotiations between Israel and Lebanon were expected to begin Tuesday in the U.S. capital, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun's office said Friday. Beirut is keen to hold direct talks to end the war between Israel and Hezbollah, but under a ceasefire similar to the one with Iran.
Before his departure, Vance said he believed the negotiations with Iran will be “positive.”
But he added, “If they’re going to try and play us, then they’re going to find that the negotiating team is not that receptive.”
In Islamabad, security forces locked down key parts of the Pakistani capital, erecting barricades along routes from the airport to the city.
Hours later, the Iranian delegation led by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf arrived in Islamabad, Iranian state TV reported. The delegation included security, political, military, economic and legal teams. The report said negotiations will begin only if the other side accepts Iran’s preconditions.
Earlier in the day, Qalibaf posted on social media that two points he said had been mutually agreed on — a ceasefire in Lebanon and the release of blocked Iranian assets — have yet to be implemented.
“These two matters must be fulfilled before negotiations begin,” he wrote.
Israel’s insistence that the ceasefire in Iran does not include a pause in its fighting with Hezbollah has threatened to sink the deal. The militant group joined the war in support of its backer, Iran.
The day the truce was announced, Israel pounded Beirut with airstrikes, killing more than 300 people, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. It was the deadliest day in the country since the war began Feb. 28.
Trump said Thursday that he had asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to dial back the strikes.
Then on Friday, Israeli warplanes struck near a state security office in the southern town of Nabatieh, killing 13 officers, according to the Lebanese president's office. Israeli forces said they also hit about 10 rocket launchers in Lebanon that had fired toward northern Israel.
A day earlier, Netanyahu said he authorized the negotiations with Lebanon with the aim of disarming Hezbollah militants and establishing relations between the neighbors, which have technically been at war since Israel was established in 1948.
Aoun’s office confirmed that the two sides were set to negotiate after Lebanon and Israel’s ambassadors to the U.S. held a call with Washington’s ambassador to Lebanon to discuss terms. The U.S. State Department will mediate.
In a first statement since Israel announced direct negotiations with Lebanon, Hezbollah chief Naim Kassem urged Lebanese officials to stop offering “free concessions,” but he did not take a clear stance on the talks.
Two days after Israel's barrage, people sifted through the wreckage of their homes, trying to salvage furniture and personal mementos. Some expressed gratitude that they did not lose loved ones.
“There is no substitute for family,” said Wissam Tabila, 35. “Everything else can be replaced.”
Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent oil prices skyrocketing, driven stocks down and roiled the world economy. Tehran's control over the waterway has proved its biggest strategic advantage in the war.
The spot price of Brent crude, the international standard, was around $97 Friday, up more than 30% since the war started.
Before the conflict, over 100 ships passed through the strait each day — many carrying oil to Asia. With the ceasefire in place, only 12 have been recorded passing through.
Trump said Iran has little clout in the negotiations.
“The Iranians don’t seem to realize they have no cards, other than a short term extortion of the World by using International Waterways,” Trump posted Friday. “The only reason they are alive today is to negotiate!”
Questions also remain over the fate of Iran’s missile and nuclear programs, which the U.S. and Israel sought to eliminate in going to war.
The U.S. insists Iran must never be able to build nuclear weapons and wants to remove Tehran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which could be used to make them. Iran insists its program is peaceful.
Trump has said that the U.S. would work with Iran to remove the uranium, though Tehran has not confirmed that.
More than 3,000 people have been killed in Iran, a top Iranian officer told the state-run Iran newspaper. Iran’s government has not provided any definitive death toll from the war.
In Lebanon, at least 1,953 people have been killed and 1 million have been displaced. Over a dozen people have died in Gulf Arab states and the occupied West Bank, while 23 civilians were killed in Israel. Thirteen U.S. service members have been killed.
In other developments, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukrainian forces shot down Iranian‑designed Shahed drones in several Middle Eastern countries during the Iran war. The missions, carried out with domestically produced interceptor drones, were part of efforts to help partners counter the same weapons Russia uses in Ukraine, he said.
Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Mednick from Tel Aviv, Israel. Associated Press writers Will Weissert and Aamer Madhani in Washington; Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City; and Kareem Chehayeb and Hussein Malla in Beirut contributed to this report.
Hezbollah supporters shout slogans against the Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam during a protest in front the government palace, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
A resident checks damage to buildings as she walks near charred cars, at the site of Wednesday's Israeli airstrike, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, April 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
Vice President JD Vance walks to speak with the Press before boarding Air Force Two, Friday, April 10, 2026, at Joint Base Andrews, Md., for expected departure to Pakistan, for talks on Iran. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, pool)
A Lebanese civil defense worker, right, stands with a resident at the site of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike a day earlier in central Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
A Lebanese civil defense worker looks on as an excavator operates on the rubble of a building destroyed in an Israeli airstrike a day earlier in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
A woman carries a flag of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group during a ceremony marking the 40th day since the death of Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A poster is pasted on a motorbike windshield with graphic depicting Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei as government supporters gather to mark the 40th day since the killing of his father, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
People residing in an underground shelter pack up their belongings as they prepare to leave after the announcement of a two-week ceasefire agreement between Iran and the US, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)
Mourners carry the coffin of Mohammad Zein al-Abedin Shehab, who was killed in an Israeli airstrike a day earlier, during his funeral procession in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Hassan Ammar)
Displaced families extend their hands while waiting for donated food beside the tents they use as shelters after fleeing Israeli bombardment in southern Lebanon, in Beirut, Lebanon, Thursday, April 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti)
