Two Cubans killed by would-be hijackers

On May 3, two weeks after the release by a U.S. court of known terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, two Cuban Army deserters commandeered a civilian bus and used it to enter José Martí Airport, where they unsuccessfully tried to hijack a chartered plane headed for the U.S.  Two members of Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces were killed while defending the Cuban people from the attack.

The two deserters had first killed sentry Yoendris Gutiérrez as they left their posts at the Managua Army Base armed with automatic rifles. They commandeered a bus from Santiago de las Vegas, near Managua, taking the passengers hostage and forcing the driver to ram the bus through security gates at José Martí International Airport near an area that handles flights between Havana and Miami. The terrified bus passengers were then forced at gunpoint onto an aircraft bound for the U.S.

One of the bus passengers, Víctor Ibo Acuña Velázquez, a lieutenant colonel in the Revolutionary Armed Forces who was off duty and unarmed and just happened to be riding the bus at the time it was commandeered, was killed aboard the plane while heroically attempting to subdue the hostage takers.

In an article in the Cuban newspaper Granma on May 8, President Fidel Castro emphasized the role that U.S. aid to terrorists who commit crimes against the Cuban people plays in prompting and encouraging incidents like this attempted hijacking.

Castro asserted that the attempted hijacking was “a consequence of freeing the monster of terror. ... The impunity and material benefits that have been rewarded for nearly a half century for all violent actions committed against Cuba stimulate such acts.”

The “monster of terror” Fidel Castro was referring to is Luis Posada Carriles, the CIA-trained killer wanted in connection with a 1976 Cubana Airline bombing that claimed the lives of 73 people. Cuba and Venezuela are both seeking Posada Carriles’ extradition to Venezuela in that case. Posada Carriles is also wanted in connection with a string of 1997 hotel bombings in Havana.

The evidence against Posada Carriles can only be described as overwhelming and includes an interview published in the New York Times in which he bragged about his role in these atrocities. (New York Times, July 12 and 13, 1998)  But, despite the evidence, and in the face of international protests calling for Posada Carriles to be held accountable for the crimes he has committed, the U.S. regime, the same regime that claims to be fighting a global war on terrorism, freed this international terrorist on April 19.

While the hypocrisy of the empire is perhaps starkest in the release of Posada Carriles, it is, in fact, as Fidel Castro pointed out in his recent article in Granma, only the latest injustice in what has been a long history of crimes that have been actively fomented, planned and financed by the imperialist regime in Washington.

From the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, to the numerous assassination attempts, to the blockade and embargo, and now with the release of the trained murderer Posada Carriles, the U.S. capitalist class has tried every method imaginable in its quest to extinguish the revolutionary socialist society in Cuba.  It is a testament to the will of the Cuban people that, despite every act of aggression perpetrated against them, the flag of the Cuban Revolution still flies over José Martí International Airport.

Both Lt. Col. Víctor Ibo Acuña Velázquez and Yoendris Gutiérrez were posthumously awarded the Antonio Maceo Medal of Valor, the highest Cuban military honor, for giving their lives in efforts to stop the would-be hijackers.