New evidence on the “Havana syndrome”. The Pentagon says a US official has developed symptoms at the NATO summit in Vilnius

A high-ranking official in the US Department of Defense presented symptoms similar to those of the so-called “Havana syndrome” at the NATO summit in Vilnius last July, the Pentagon said on Monday. The announcement comes as a media investigation revealed links between “Havana syndrome” and Russian espionage.

“I can confirm that a senior Department of Defense official has experienced symptoms similar to those reported in the abnormal health incidents,” Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said in Washington, when asked about a news report about “Havana syndrome”.

“This person was present there, at the NATO summit in Vilnius, but she was not part of the delegation of the secretary of defense who was also there at that time,” she added, according to dpa, taken over by Agerpres.

In late 2016, a number of employees of the US embassy in Havana and members of their families began to complain of symptoms such as headaches, hearing loss, dizziness and nausea. The symptoms became known as “Havana syndrome” or abnormal health incidents.

Similar complaints have been reported in other parts of the world. Those affected stated that the symptoms appeared after hearing a strange noise or feeling a strong pressure in the head.

Initially, the American government did not rule out the possibility that these symptoms were some kind of attack.

A year ago, an official report cited five of seven U.S. intelligence agencies as saying it was “highly unlikely” that a “foreign adversary” was responsible for the cases after reviewing more than 1,500 ” abnormal health incidents”.

The reported cases were attributed in this unclassified report to pre-existing conditions, diseases or environmental factors.

Russian services, suspected of involvement

Journalists from the German magazine Der Spiegel, along with colleagues from CBS’s “60 Minutes” and investigative media group The Insider, based in Riga (Latvia), published an investigation citing a US military investigator who stated that the Russian secret services could be behind the “Havana syndrome”.

Der Spiegel also quotes an affected person who claims that the first cases of the syndrome appeared as early as 2014 at the US consulate in Frankfurt. CBS also mentioned the Vilnius case in its report.

According to the year-long investigation, a sabotage unit of Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU, known as Unit no. 29155, were at the scene of the health incidents when reported by US personnel, and the source of the health incidents may be “directed energy weapons”.

However, the Kremlin denied the information published by the press. “No one has ever published or stated any convincing evidence of these baseless allegations. Therefore, all these are nothing more than baseless accusations by the media,” said Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman.

The US Department of Defense said it did not want to confirm or comment on this information. It provided significant compensation and support to affected employees under the Havana Act.

Singh said the 2023 intelligence report is still valid.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “has confidence in the intelligence community, and it continues to make its own assessment,” said the quoted spokeswoman. “The investigation is ongoing, so obviously we can’t say more at this time,” she added.

Publisher: BP

Download the Digi24 app and find out the most important news of the day