‘Olympic gold in surviving’

CUBAN security services claim there were more than 600 bids to kill Fidel Castro during his life.

He was despised by the US for creating a communist stronghold just miles from its coastline and the CIA spent decades trying to assassinate Castro.

The dictator is said to have survived exploding cigars and seashells, a poisonous fountain pen, execution attempts and even a failed bid to get his iconic beard to fall out.

The majority of the assassination attempts took place in the 1960s when Cuba was at the heart of the Cold War battle between the US and the Soviet Union.

Cuba successfully repelled an attempt to topple the Castro government in the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

A year later American reconnaissance planes discovered Soviet missiles on their way to sites in the Caribbean island – catapulting the world to the edge of all-out nuclear war.

Both events made the death of Castro a huge prize.

The CIA tried to get him to smoke a cigar packed with explosives while the CIA employed his ex-mistress Marita Lorenz to feed him poisoned pills.

She had lived in Cuba while seeing Castro until she became pregnant and suddenly fell ill.

When she returned to the USA spies told her that Castro had arranged for her to have a late-term abortion without telling her.

This convinced her to return to Cuba and assassinate her one-time lover by dropping a capsule of poison into his drink.

However, Castro found out about the plan and when she came back to Cuba he handed her a pistol and dared her to shoot him.

Recalling the time, she said: “I thought he was going to shoot me, but he gave me the gun and asked: ‘Did you come to kill me?’

“Then he took a puff on his cigar and closed his eyes. He made himself vulnerable because he knew I couldn’t do it. He still loved me and I still loved him.”

Lorenz dropped the gun and fell into his arms.

Speaking about the multiple attempts to take his life, he said: “If surviving assassination attempts were an Olympic event, I would win the gold medal.”