Vol. 71/No. 20      May 21, 2007

The hijackers were two army draftees who had deserted from a military base near the José Martí International Airport here four days earlier, after killing a young soldier on sentry duty and stealing two AK-47 assault rifles.

The two deserters reportedly took over a bus with several passengers—including Lt. Col. Víctor Acuña, 41, of Cuba's Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR)—and used it to ram through an airport gate. They then entered an empty plane parked on the tarmac, forcing the passengers of the bus onto the aircraft, and demanded to leave for the United States.

Inside the plane, the hijackers killed Acuña when he attempted to disarm them.

Cuba's Ministry of the Interior issued a statement the day after the attack, blaming the hijacking on U.S. government policies that encourage such criminal acts by refusing to send the perpetrators back to Cuba or to prosecute them in the United States (see statement printed this page).

More than a dozen Cubans have been injured and two killed in nine hijacking attempts on the island since 1987.

The statement also condemned a U.S. district court judge's recent release on bail of the CIA-trained murderer Luis Posada Carriles, pointing out that such measures encourage criminal acts like the May 3 hijacking attempt. Carriles was involved in the 1976 midair bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73 people and has admitted to organizing a 1997 bombing campaign against Cuba.

The Cuban statement denounced the Cuban Adjustment Act as well. Approved by U.S. Congress in 1966, the law encourages people to leave Cuba for the United Sates by providing virtually automatic asylum to any Cuban who reaches U.S. shores, regardless of crimes they may have committed to get there, and by offering them expedited permanent residency.

According to the May 5 issue of the Cuban daily Juventud Rebelde, thousands attended a ceremony in Pinar del Río, where Acuña was buried. Participants paid tribute to him as a revolutionary combatant and denounced the attempted hijacking.

At the event, the FAR posthumously awarded Acuña the Antonio Maceo Medal of Honor, on the request of Raúl Castro, Cuba's acting president and minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
 
 
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