Cubans demand US extradite 1976 plane bomber

Ismael Batista

Commemorations of the 39th anniversary of the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 were held in Barbados, Cuba, Guyana and Venezuela Oct. 6. Two bombs exploded on the flight shortly after it took off from Barbados that day in 1976, killing all 73 people on board. They were planted under the orders of Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada, right-wing opponents of the Cuban Revolution who directed the operation from Venezuela.

Among those murdered were 57 Cubans, including 24 members of the Cuban youth fencing team; 11 Guyanese, six on their way to study medicine in Cuba; and five North Koreans from a cultural delegation.

Both Bosch and Posada had ties to the CIA, although the spy agency denied it had anything to do with the bombing. They later moved to the U.S. Despite their well-known role in the attack, Washington refused to extradite them to Venezuela. Bosch died in Miami in 2011; Posada still lives there today.

In an open letter to President Barack Obama Oct. 6 demanding Posada’s extradition, the Cuban Barbadian Friendship Association noted that the Cuban Five — Gerardo Hernández, Ramón Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González and René González — were on a mission “to monitor the terrorist activities of those mercenaries and report their planned threats back to Cuba” when they were arrested by the FBI in 1998. The frame-up of the Five on charges of conspiracy to commit espionage and the refusal to extradite Posada show Washington’s hypocrisy, the letter said. The last of the Five were freed and returned to Cuba in December.

Nile Jorge Prats Reyes, grandson of one of the attendants on Flight 455, read a message from the Cuban Five at the event at Havana’s Colón Cemetery (above).

To avoid further attacks “many Cubans left their homes and silently, in the enemy’s lair, wove with their hands the defense of the homeland,” the message said.

— SETH GALINSKY