Cubana Flight 455

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**Cubana Flight 455**
Summary
Date	October 6, 1976
Type	Airline Bombing
Site	8 km west of Seawell Airport, Bridgetown
Fatalities	73
Injuries	0
Aircraft
Aircraft type	Douglas DC-8
Operator	Cubana de Aviación
Tail number	CU-T1201
Passengers	48
Crew	25
Survivors	0

Cubana Flight 455 was a Cubana de Aviación flight departing from Barbados, via Trinidad, to Cuba. On October 6, 1976 two timebombs variously described as dynamite or C-4 planted on the Douglas DC-8 aircraft exploded, killing all 73 people on board in the most deadly commercial airlines incident in the Western hemisphere (until the June 23, 1985 bombing of Air India Flight 182 over the North Atlantic Ocean, which caused 329 deaths). Evidence implicated several CIA-linked anti-Castro Cuban exiles and members of the Venezuelan secret police DISIP. Political complications quickly arose when Cuba accused the US government of being an accomplice to the attack. CIA documents released in 2005 indicate that the agency had prior knowledge that the bombing was going to take place.

Four men were arrested in connection with the bombing: Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo Lozano were sentenced to 20-year prison terms, Orlando Bosch was acquitted because of technical defects in the prosecution evidence, and now lives in Miami, Florida, and Luis Posada Carriles escaped from prison and eventually fled to the United States, where he is currently being held on charges of entering the country illegally as of August 2006.

1 The Crash
2 Judicial Proceedings
3 Political implications
- 3.1 Possible FBI and CIA knowledge
- 3.2 Cuba
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] The Crash

On October 6, 1976, Flight CU-455 was scheduled to fly the following route: Guyana to Trinidad, Trinidad to Barbados, Barbados to Kingston, Jamaica, and finally Kingston to Havana, Cuba.

At 17:24, nine minutes after takeoff from Barbados's Seawell airport and at an altitude of 18,000 feet, a bomb located in the aircraft's rear lavatories exploded. The captain, Wilfredo Pérez Pérez, radioed to the control tower: "We have an explosion aboard, we are descending immediately! ... We have fire on board! We are requesting immediate landing! We have a total emergency!"

The plane went into a rapid descent, while the pilots unsuccessfully tried to return the plane to Seawell Airport. A second bomb exploded during the following minutes, causing the plane to crash. Realizing a successful landing was no longer possible, it appears that the pilot turned the craft away from the beach and towards the Atlantic Ocean, saving the lives of many tourists. This occurred about eight kilometres short of the airport.

All 48 passengers and 25 crew aboard the plane died: 57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese, and five North Koreans. Among the dead were all 24 members of the 1975 national Cuban Fencing team that had just won all the gold medals in the Central American and Caribbean Championship; many were teenagers.

Several officials of the Cuban government were also aboard the plane: Manuel Permuy Hernández, communist party director of the National Institute of Sports (INDER); Jorge de la Nuez Suárez, communist party secretary for the shrimp fleet; Alfonso González, National Commissioner of firearm sports; and Domingo Chacón Coello, an agent from the Interior Ministry [1].

The 11 Guyanese passengers included 18 and 19-year-old medical students, and the young wife of a Guyanese diplomat.

The five Koreans were government officials and a cameraman.

[edit] Judicial Proceedings

[edit] Arrests

Hours after the explosions, Trinidad authorities arrested Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo Lozano, two Venezuelan men who had boarded the plane in Trinidad and checked their baggage to Cuba but who had exited the plane in Barbados and flown back to Trinidad. Ricardo had been travelling with a false identity under the name of José Vázquez García.

Lugo and Ricardo confessed, and declared to be acting under the orders of Luis Posada Carriles. Their testimony, along with other evidence, implicated Carriles and another Venezuelan, Orlando Bosch.

On 14 October 1976, Posada and Bosch were both arrested in Caracas, Venezuela and the offices of Investigaciones Comerciales e Industriales C.A. (ICICA), a private investigator's company owned by Posada, were raided. Weapons, explosives and a radio transmitter were found. Ricardo was an employee of ICICA at the time of the attack, while Lugo worked as a photographer for the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons.

On October 20, authorities of Trinidad, Cuba, Barbados, Guyana and Venezuela held a meeting in Port of Spain, during which the decision was taken to hold the trial in Venezuela, since the four accused were citizens of that country. Shorty after, Lugo and Ricardo were deported to Venezuela.

[edit] Military trial

On August 25, 1977, Judge Delia Estava Moreno referred the case to a military tribunal, charging all four co-conspirators with treason.

In September of 1980, a Venezuelan military judge acquitted all four men.

The prosecutor appealed, arguing that a military court was the wrong forum to try the case for two reasons: none of the men were military personnel in 1976, and the crime of qualified homicide or aggravated homicide cannot be tried by a military tribunal. The Military Court of Appeals agreed and surrendered jurisdiction, rendering the acquittal moot. The Judge ruled that the accused "are civilians and the crimes imputed to them are governed by the penal (and not the military) code... Civilians and common law crimes are not subject to the dispositions of the Code of Military Justice..."

[edit] Civilian trial

The four were then charged with aggravated homicide and treason before a civilian court.

On August 8, 1985, Venezuelan judge Alberto Perez Marcano of the 11th Penal Court convicted Lugo and Ricardo, sentencing them each to 20 years in prison. The judge reduced the penalty to its lowest limit "due to the extenuating circumstance of no prior criminal records." Orlando Bosch was acquitted, because the evidence gathered by the Barbados authorities during the investigation could not be used in the Venezuela trial, as it was presented too late and had not been translated into Spanish.

Posada fled from the San Juan de los Morros penitentiary on the eve of the pronouncement of his sentence. He had been confined in this prison following two previous failed escape attempts. Allegations were made that Venezuelan authorities were bribed to help him escape. No verdict was entered against Posada because, according to the Venezuelan Penal Code, judicial proceedings cannot continue without the presence of the accused. The court issued an arrest warrant against him which is still pending as of November, 2005.

[edit] Aftermath

A different judge then ordered the case reviewed by a higher court. The Venezuelan government declined to appeal the case any further, and in November 1987 Bosch was freed. He had spent 11 years in jail despite having been acquitted twice.

Lugo and Lozano were released in 1993 and continue to reside in Venezuela.

Posada fled to Panama, then to the United States. In April of 2005, a new warrant for Posada's arrest in connection with the bombing was issued by Venezuela by the government of Hugo Chávez. In September of 2005, a US immigration judge ruled that Posada should not be deported to either Cuba or Venezuela because he could be subject to torture.

[edit] Political implications

Some anti-Castro groups have justified the attack by stating that the plane was a military target because it contained military personnel and high-level Cuban and North Korean government officials, and/or that the attack was revenge for other alleged terrorist attacks originated by the Cuban government. Another explanation advanced by these groups is that the attack could have been ordered by Castro himself as a way to eliminate political opponents. Finally, they also point to the lack of reliability of Cubana de Aviacion, noting that the crash could have been an accident that the Castro government used to further its political agenda of opposition to the US government.

[edit] Possible FBI and CIA knowledge

Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born naturalized Venezuelan, was the Director of Counterintelligence at Venezuela's FBI equivalent, the DISIP, from 1967 to 1974. A U.S. Government document released through FOIA also confirms Posada's status with the CIA: "Luis Posada, in whom CIA has an operational interest - Posada is receiving approximately $300 per month from CIA". Posada was heavily involved with right-wing anti-Castro groups, in particular the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) and the Coordinadora de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas (Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations - CORU), led at the time by Orlando Bosch.

A declassified CIA document dated October 12, 1976, quotes Posada as saying, a few days after a plate fund-raising meeting for CORU held around September 15th, "We are going to hit a Cuban airliner... Orlando has the details" (Source Comment: The identites of "We" and "Orlando" were not known at the time.) [2].

A declassified FBI document dated October 21, 1976, quotes CORU member Secundino Carrera as stating that CORU "was responsible for the bombing of the Cubana Airlines DC-8 on October 6, 1976... this bombing and the resulting deaths were fully justified because CORU was at war with the Fidel Castro regime." Carrera also expressed his pleasure over the attention paid to the United States over the bombing, as it was taking attention off of himself and his associate. [3]

[edit] Cuba

The Cuban Government claims that Flight 455 is just one of many terrorist plots committed against Cuba by the United States. [4] [5] A monument was erected in Barbados to the memory of the people killed in the bombing, and it was visited several times by Fidel Castro, including a visit during the CARICOM meeting in December 2005 during which Cuban officials called for Posada "to be brought to justice so as to bring closure to this egregious incident that caused so much pain to the people of the region."