(Washington) American intelligence said on Wednesday “very unlikely” that a foreign power or a weapon is at the origin of the mysterious “Havana syndrome”, this unexplained disorder which affected dozens of American diplomats or employees of embassies.
“Based on a collective effort involving intelligence agencies […]I can tell you that most of them have now concluded that it is very unlikely that a foreign entity is responsible” for these problems, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines said in a statement. communicated, while specifying that the agencies did not all have the same degree of “confidence” in their evaluation.
U.S. intelligence still believes that the symptoms observed by these employees were “probably due to factors not involving a foreign entity such as pre-existing conditions, conventional illnesses, or environmental factors,” according to the statement.
Mme Haines as well as CIA Director William Burns and other US officials were quick to say that these findings do not question or downplay “in any way” the real problems reported by those affected.
These health problems (migraines, dizziness, nausea, visual disturbances, etc.) first struck American and Canadian diplomats posted in Cuba in 2016, hence its name “Havana syndrome”.
These “abnormal health incidents”, according to the terminology used in the United States, were then reported elsewhere in the world (China, Germany, Australia, Russia, Austria), and even in Washington.
Havana syndrome remains unexplained to this day by scientists who have put forward multiple hypotheses.
However, seven intelligence agencies have examined around 1,000 cases of “abnormal health incidents” in recent years, and five of them have concluded that it is “very unlikely” that these disorders were caused by a deliberate attack.
One of the agencies deems this hypothesis as “improbable” only, while another refrains from concluding, according to the report.
‘No credible evidence’
This conclusion seems to go against an expert report published a year ago according to which electromagnetic waves could have been in some cases the origin of the mysterious syndrome, thus supporting the thesis of deliberate attacks.
But in its latest assessment, US intelligence concludes that “there is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or mechanism that caused this unrest.”
The CIA had already judged last year “improbable” that a foreign entity could have launched a systematic campaign targeting employees in American embassies around the world, but without excluding it in about twenty cases.
For lawyer Mark Zaid, who says he represents more than 20 suffering people, “this latest assessment by American intelligence lacks transparency and we continue to question the accuracy of these conclusions”.
“It is inconceivable given the many unanswered questions that this report today is the last word,” he said.
In August 2021, US Vice President Kamala Harris’ visit to Hanoi was delayed three hours after such an alert in the Vietnamese capital.
In September 2017, former President Donald Trump ordered the departure of almost all employees of the United States Embassy in Havana, because of this supposed “syndrome”.
The American embassy resumed at the beginning of January the issuance of visas for Cubans wishing to settle in the United States.