BY JANET POST
MIAMI - The government of Cuba is asking the U.S. government for the return of three Cubans who hijacked a Cuban plane to Florida on August 16.

The three residents of Havana -Leonardo Reyes Ramirez, Roberto Cuello, and Adel Regalado - boarded the plane at knife- point near Guanabacoa and ordered the pilot, Adolfo Perez Pantoja, to fly to South Florida.

The plane crashed 30 miles southwest of Sanibel Island where the pilot and hijackers were picked up by a Russian freighter and transferred to a U.S. Coast Guard cutter.

The pilot immediately requested to go back to Cuba, but was held in the United States for a week. Once back in Havana, Perez Pantoja told the press that he had been threatened with a pistol and a knife. Hijacker Reyes Ramirez had told Miami press they had threatened the pilot with a nail file.

The aircraft was being used to shuttle vacationers in Cuba along the northern coast.

Cuello boarded the plane pretending to be a Cuban tourist guide. Reyes Ramirez faked being a tourist from Columbia and Regalado worked for the Cuban tourist enterprise, the Miami Herald reported August 22.

But the Cuban pilot told media in Havana that Reyes Ramirez also had said he was an "agent of the CIA" and the other two hijackers said they were "activists of a human rights group on the island," wrote El Nuevo Herald on August 24.

According to the Miami Herald, after hijacking the plane, "the three dropped 2,500 to 3,000 political pamphlets to protest the Feb. 24 downing by Cuban MIG's" of U.S.-based Brothers to the Rescue aircraft.

The pilot, Perez Pantoja, told the hijackers he did not have enough fuel for the mileage to Florida but they ordered him to fly nonetheless.

Washington expels Cuban diplomat
Meanwhile, on August 19 the Clinton administration announced it was expelling José Luis Ponce, a Cuban diplomat at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington.

This followed the Cuban government's order that Robin Meyer, an officer at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, leave the country. Cuban officials charged Meyer with carrying out activities "incompatible with her diplomatic status," such as organizing meetings for opponents of the Cuban revolution.  
 
 
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