Cuba: Runaway soldiers kill officer in plane hijack bid
A pair of heavily armed Cuban soldiers seized a city bus, killed an army officer and triggered a gun battle in a foiled bid to hijack a charter flight bound for the US.
The young army deserters were arrested before dawn yesterday on the Tarmac of a terminal that handles special charter flights between Havana and Miami, as well as New York and other American cities.
The soldiers forced the bus driver to head to Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport at gunpoint and killed Army Lt Col Victor Ibo Acuna Velazquez aboard a plane that had no passengers or crew – apparently because there were no flights at the early hour. Both were captured and will probably face the death penalty.
An interior ministry statement suggested that Acuna Velazquez, who was unarmed, happened to be on the bus at the time it was commandeered and died “heroically” trying to thwart the hijacking. Other bus passengers were unharmed.
The government blamed anti-Cuba US policy for the incident.
“The responsibility for these new crimes lies with the highest-ranking authorities of the US, adding to the long list of terrorist acts that Cuba has been the victim of for nearly half a century,” it said.
Havana says US immigration policies giving most Cubans almost guaranteed residency encourages them to risk their lives to get to the US, and that American officials have long tolerated – even encouraged – violence against the Communist-run country.
The incident comes amid a political campaign by Cuba’s government accusing US authorities of protecting its arch enemy Luis Posada Carriles, a 79-year-old Cuban militant whom it accuses of an airliner bombing three decades ago and a string of Havana hotel bombings in the late 1990s.
Yesterday’s was the first Cuban hijacking attempt reported since the spring of 2003, when an architect seized an airliner carrying passengers on a domestic flight from the Isle of Youth and diverted it to the US by brandishing fake grenades. The hijacker was later sentenced to 20 years in prison in the US.
The previous month, six hijackers forced a Cuban passenger plane to fly to the US at knifepoint. US Air Force fighter jets forced the aircraft to land in Key West.
Yesterday’s suspects were among three army soldiers on mandatory military service who fled their base with assault rifles on Sunday, after killing a fellow soldier and wounding another. The statement said the third escaped soldier was captured before the attempted hijacking.
The three will almost certainly face a lightening-quick trial by military tribunal. The death penalty is likely.
