Could Fidel go out in a hail of coca leaves?
How safe is Fidel Castro? Last night’s documentary on Channel 4, 638 Ways to Kill Castro, catalogued nearly 50 years of the CIA’s fruitless attempts to polish him off.
But where the exploding sea shell, the toxic cigar and the studio drenched in LSD all failed, one well-intentioned friend of the mouthy Cuban autocrat may yet succeed.
Evo Morales, the Bolivian President, has promised to bring a cake laced with coca leaves, the base ingredient for cocaine, to Fidel’s lavish 80th birthday party on Saturday.
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The celebrations are four months late because of the Cuban leader’s ill-health so is this really a good idea? John Henry, a clinical toxicologist at St Mary’s Hospital, London, thinks not: “It could just push him over the edge,” says Henry. The conspiracy theory started here . . .