CubaMinrex. Sitio del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores de Cuba

On 6 October 2001, at the largest public demonstration against terrorism in the world, when one million Cubans gathered in the Plaza de la Revolución, the Head of State of Cuba made the following statement

"Fellow citizens:

History is capricious and is given to strange twists. Twenty-five years ago, in this very same square, we bid farewell to a few coffins containing tiny fragments of the human remains and personal belongings of some of the 57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese - most of them students on scholarships in Cuba - and 5 Korean cultural officials who died as a result of a brutal and incredible act of terrorism. What was especially moving was the death of the entire youth fencing team, male and female, who were returning with all the gold medals they had won in a Central American championship in that sport.

A million of our fellow countrymen, with tears in their eyes, in many cases running down their cheeks, bid a more symbolic than actual farewell to our brothers and sisters whose bodies were lying at the bottom of the ocean.

No one, with the exception of a group of friendly distinguished persons and institutions, shared our sorrow; there was no uproar in the world, no serious political crises, no meetings at the United Nations, no imminent threat of war.

Perhaps few people in the world understood the terrible significance of that act. How important could it be that a Cuban civilian aircraft was destroyed in mid-flight with 73 people on board? It was as if it was a normal occurrence. Had not thousands of Cubans died already in La Coubre, Escambray and the Bay of Pigs and in hundreds of terrorist attacks, acts of piracy and other similar actions? Who was going to attach importance to the complaints of a tiny country? It seemed that a simple denial from our powerful neighbour and its news media, which flooded the world, was sufficient and the matter would be forgotten.

Who could have predicted that almost exactly 25 years later a war with unpredictable consequences would be on the point of breaking out as a result of an equally repugnant terrorist attack which claimed the lives of thousands of innocent people in the United States? Back then, in what now appears to be a tragic omen, innocent people from several countries died; on this occasion human beings from 86 nations perished.

Then, as now, there were hardly any remains of the victims. In Barbados, not a single body could be recovered; in New York, only a few were recovered and not all of those could be identified. In both cases, family members were left with a vast emptiness and immense distress; the horrific crime brought unbearable sorrow and deep indignation to the peoples of each country. These were not accidents or the result of mechanical failures or human error; they were deliberate acts, conceived and carried out in cold blood.

There were, however, some differences between the monstrous crime committed off the coast of Barbados and the inconceivable and sinister terrorist attack against the people of the United States. In the United States, the act was the work of fanatics who were prepared to die alongside their victims; in Barbados, it was the work of mercenaries who did not run the slightest risk. The main goal in the United States was not to kill the passengers; the perpetrators hijacked the aircraft in order to attack the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, without any concern for the death of the innocent people travelling in them. In Barbados, the basic objective of the mercenaries was to kill the passengers.

In both cases, the anguish suffered by the passengers during the final minutes of their lives, especially those in the fourth aircraft hijacked in the United States - who already knew what had happened in New York and Washington - must have been terrible, like that of the crew and passengers of the Cuban aircraft during the desperate attempt to return to land when it was clearly impossible to do so. In both cases, there were demonstrations of courage and determination: in Barbados, we learned of them from the recorded voices of the Cuban crew, and, in the United States, from reports from that country on the attitude adopted by the passengers.

Moving filmed images have remained of the horrific events in New York. Not a single photograph has remained, nor could remain, of the explosion of the aircraft off the coast of Barbados and its plunge into the sea. The only testimony left is to be found in the dramatic communications between the crew of the doomed aircraft and the control tower at the airport in Barbados.

This was the first time in the history of Latin America that such an act had been instigated from abroad.

In this hemisphere, the systematic use in the political arena of such cruel and terrible practices and procedures was initiated against our country. It was preceded in 1959 by another equally senseless and irresponsible practice: the hijacking and diversion of aircraft in mid-flight, a phenomenon which was practically unknown in the world at that time.

The first attack of this kind was the hijacking of a DC-3 passenger aircraft bound from Havana to the Isla de la Juventud by several former members of the repressive forces of Batista's tyranny, who diverted the aircraft and forced the pilot to fly to Miami on 16 April 1959. This was less than four months after the triumph of the Revolution. The perpetrators of the attack were never punished.

Between 1959 and 2001, a total of 51 Cuban aircraft were hijacked and almost without exception diverted to the United States. Many of these hijacked aircraft were never returned to Cuba. A number of pilots, guards and other people were killed or wounded and several aircraft were destroyed or seriously damaged in failed hijacking attempts.

As a consequence, the plague of hijackings of aircraft in mid-flight soon spread to the United States itself, where, for the most varied reasons, a number of people, most of them unbalanced individuals, adventurers or common criminals, from both the United States and Latin America, began to hijack aircraft, armed with firearms, knives, Molotov cocktails and sometimes just bottles of water made to look as though they contained gasoline, with which they threatened to set the aircraft on fire.

Thanks to the painstaking care of the Cuban authorities, not a single accident occurred upon landing and the passengers always received proper treatment and were immediately returned to their places of origin.

Most of the hijackings and diversions of Cuban aircraft occurred between 1959 and 1973. Faced with the risk of a catastrophe in the United States or Cuba, since there were hijackers who, once they had taken control of an aircraft, threatened to fly it into the Oak Ridge atomic plant if certain demands were not met, the Government of Cuba took the initiative of approaching the Government of the United States - at that time under the Presidency of Richard Nixon and with William Rogers as Secretary of State - with a proposal for an agreement to deal with cases of hijacking of aircraft and piracy at sea. The proposal was accepted and the agreement was quickly drawn up; it was signed by representatives of the two Governments on 15 February 1973 and immediately published in the Cuban press and given wide coverage.

This reasonable and well-drafted agreement established heavy penalties for hijackers of aircraft and ships. It served as a deterrent. From that date on, there was a considerable reduction in the number of Cuban aircraft hijacked; during a period of over 10 years every attempted hijacking in Cuba failed.

The brutal terrorist attack that led to the explosion of the Cuban aircraft in mid-flight dealt a devastating blow to this excellent and effective agreement. As a result of this inconceivable act of aggression and taking into account the fact that it occurred in the middle of a new wave of terrorist acts against Cuba unleashed towards the end of 1975, the Cuban Government denounced the agreement, in accordance with the clauses stipulated therein. However, it retained in force, unchanged, the measures set out in the agreement against the hijacking of United States aircraft, including the application of severe penalties which, under the agreement, had been increased to sentences of up to 20 years' imprisonment. Even before the agreement was signed, the Cuban courts had been applying the penalties established in our Penal Code against aircraft hijackers, although the penalties were less severe.

Despite the strict application of the penalties, a few United States aircraft were hijacked and diverted to Cuba. After due advance warning, the Cuban Government returned two hijackers to the United States on 18 September 1980, handing them over to the United States authorities.

During the period from September 1968 to December 1984, 71 incidents were recorded of aircraft being hijacked and diverted to Cuba. According to the records, 69 participants in those hijackings were tried and sentenced to terms of imprisonment of between three and five years; subsequently, after the signing of the 1973 agreement, sentences ranged from 10 to 20 years.

As a result of the measures taken by Cuba, there has not been a single incident of the hijacking or diversion of a United States aircraft to Cuba in the past 17 years.

What, on the other hand, has been the attitude of the United States? From 1959 until today, the United States authorities have not punished a single one of the hundreds of individuals who have hijacked and diverted to that country dozens of Cuban aircraft, not even those who committed murder in carrying out the hijacking.

It is impossible to conceive of a greater lack of basic reciprocity or a greater incitement to the hijacking of aircraft and ships. This rigid policy has been maintained for over 42 years, without a single exception, and is still being maintained.

The constructive agreement between the Governments of Cuba and the United States on the hijacking of aircraft and ships, the results of which were immediately evident, was apparently accepted by the principal leaders of the terrorist groups. Some had cooperated or participated actively in the organization of irregular warfare, through armed groups which, at certain times, extended throughout the six former provinces of the country. The majority of them had been recruited by the United States Government in the days of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis, and in later years, to take part in all kinds of violent actions, especially in assassination plots and terrorist attacks that did not leave any sphere of economic and social life untouched or rule out any method, any procedure or any weapon.

They attended all kinds of institutions, schools and training programmes, at times to be trained and at other times to be entertained.

Dramatic events such as the Kennedy assassination gave rise to major investigations, including those carried out by a United States Senate committee. The embarrassing situations and scandals which resulted compelled a change of tactic but no genuine change of policy towards Cuba, which explains why, after relative periods of calm, there were new waves of terrorism.

That is what happened in late 1975. The Church Commission had submitted its well-known report on plots to assassinate the leaders of Cuba and other countries on 20 November of that year. The Central Intelligence Agency could not continue to assume direct responsibility for assassination plots and terrorist acts against Cuba. The solution was simple: the most trustworthy and best-trained terrorist personnel would form groups which would act independently and on their own authority. This led to the sudden birth of a bizarre coordinating organization called CORU, which was made up of the principal terrorist groups. As a rule, those groups were sharply divided by leadership ambitions and self-interest. A violent wave of terrorist actions was unleashed. In mentioning just a few of them, taken from the many major acts of terrorism which were committed during this new period, I would point out that the following occurred within the space of only four months:

· Pirate speedboats from Florida attacked two fishing boats on 6 April 1976, causing the death of one fisherman and severe damage to the boats;
· A bomb planted in the Embassy of Cuba in Portugal killed two members of the diplomatic staff, inflicted serious injuries on a number of other staff and totally destroyed the premises on 22 April;
· An assault with explosives was perpetrated against the Cuban Mission to the United Nations on 5 June, causing serious material damage;
· A bomb exploded in the van carrying the luggage for a Cubana Airlines flight at Kingston airport, Jamaica, on 9 July, moments before it was due to be loaded aboard;
· A bomb exploded in the offices of British West Indies Air in Barbados, which represented the interests of Cubana Airlines in that country, on 10 July;
· A fisheries expert was murdered during the attempted kidnapping of the Cuban consul in the Mexican city of Mérida on 24 July;
· Two members of the Cuban Embassy staff in Argentina were kidnapped on 9 August and were never heard from again;
· A bomb exploded in the offices of Cubana Airlines in Panama on 18 August, causing considerable damage.

This shows clearly that a real war was in progress. The airlines were the target of a number of attacks.

The New York Times and US News and World Report called it a new wave of terrorism against Cuba.

The groups making up CORU, which began operations in early 1976 although it was not officially constituted until June of that year, issued public statements in the United States claiming responsibility for each of the acts they perpetrated. They sent war dispatches, as they called them, from Costa Rica to the Miami press. In August, one of their organs published an article under this very title, "War dispatch", describing the destruction of a Cuban embassy. That same day, it did not hesitate to publish a particularly significant communiqué signed by the five terrorist groups that made up CORU: "We shall very soon attack aircraft in mid-flight".

To carry out their strikes, the CORU terrorists utilized without difficulty as their principal bases of operation the territories of the United States, Puerto Rico, Somoza's Nicaragua and Pinochet's Chile.

Only eight weeks later, the aircraft with 73 persons on board would be blown up off the coast of Barbados.

Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, the two Venezuelan mercenaries who planted the bomb on the Trinidad and Tobago-Barbados leg of the flight, left the plane in Barbados, returned to Trinidad, were arrested and immediately admitted their involvement.

The Barbados Police Commissioner stated before an investigative committee that Ricardo and Lugo had admitted that they worked for the CIA. He added that Ricardo had pulled out a CIA card and a second card setting out the rules for the use of C-4 plastic explosives.

On 24 October 1976, The New York Times reported that the terrorists who had launched a wave of attacks in seven countries during the past two years were the products and instruments of the CIA.

The Washington Post noted that contacts confirmed with the United States Embassy in Venezuela cast doubt on the statement issued on 15 October by the United States Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, to the effect that nobody connected with the United States Government had had anything to do with sabotage of the Cuban aircraft.

A correspondent of the Mexican newspaper Excelsior then commented from Port of Spain that, thanks to the admission by Hernán Ricardo Lozano, the Venezuelan arrested in Trinidad, for responsibility for the attack on a Cubana Airlines aircraft which had crashed off the coast of Barbados with 73 persons on board, a major anti-Castro terrorist network somehow connected with the CIA was about to be exposed.

Le Monde stated that the CIA connection with groups of Cuban-born terrorists who moved freely on United States soil was public knowledge.

Many of the most highly respected organs of the international press expressed a similar opinion.

Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, who masterminded the terrorist crime and had been associated with the CIA since 1960, were arrested and underwent a tortuous trial, plagued with irregularities, amidst enormous pressure. The Venezuelan judge, Delia Estaba Moreno, instituted legal proceedings against them for murder, the manufacture and use of firearms, and forgery and possession of false documents. Her upright attitude elicited a violent reaction from the extreme right-wing political mafia.

General Elio García Barrios, the presiding judge of the Military Court, maintained a firm and decisive stance, thanks to which the two terrorists were required to serve a prison term of several years. The Miami terrorist mafia took their revenge by riddling one of his sons with bullets in 1983.

Posada was rescued by the Cuban-American National Foundation, which sent US$ 50,000 via Panama to finance his escape. The day of the escape was 18 August 1985. In a matter of hours, he turned up in El Salvador. No sooner had he arrived than he was visited by the leaders of the Foundation. It was the time of the dirty war in Nicaragua. He was immediately entrusted with important tasks by the White House, which asked him to supply weapons and explosives by air to the counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua.

The meaning and magnitude of the tragedy go far beyond the cold figure of 73 innocent persons murdered in Barbados.

 

<< Back