BY IVAN TERRERO—Granma International staff writer—

IT was midday on that Wednesday, October 6, 1976. The aircraft commenced the maneuver of revving its four engines, and cutting off the auxiliary ignition motors.

A few minutes later it cruised along the runway and took off in a smooth but rapid ascent.

The Cubana Aviation DC-8/43, license number CUT-1201, making the CU 455 flight was distancing itself from the Seawell international airport (Barbados) en route for Kingston, Jamaica.

The control tower instructed it to report back when it reached a height of 18,000 feet.

At 12:23 p.m. the cry of “Look out!” could be heard over the radio and seconds later the co-pilot informed: “There’s been an explosion and we’re coming down right now, we have a fire on board.”

The passenger plane was 28 miles from Seawell aerodrome and the radar screen showed it making a wide turn to the right to return to the terminal area.

After flying back 10 miles the crew asked for an immediate landing and just before 12:27 the co-pilot was heard shouting: “Close the door! Close the door!”

Smoke was emanating from a section of the wing adjacent to the third engine. Nevertheless, the crew decided to release the landing equipment and utilize the flaps to increase the sustaining force of the glide and avoid a crash.

In these circumstances they were able to maintain control of the plane until a second detonation in the area of the toilets in the back part of the fuselage affected the control system by destroying or changing the configuration of the helm.

This provoked a violent lift of the plane’s nose that prompted the co-pilot to shout: “That’s worse! Stick to the water, Fello, stick to the water!” in the belief that the flight captain had shifted the controls toward himself in order to gain height.

A total silence reigned in the Seawell flight control tower: the profile of the CUT-1201 was lost for ever from the air controller’s radar screen as the plane nose-dived into the sea with 73 people on board.

After investigating that incident, the maximum authorities in Barbados announced that the Trinidad and Tobago police had caught the two Venezuelan mercenaries who executed the massacre in a Port of Spain hotel.

The identity of the detainees corresponded with the description of Hernán Ricardo Losano (who boarded as José Vázquez García) and Freddy Lugo. The first was employed by an alleged firm of private detectives located in Caracas owned by Luis Posada Carriles, and the latter a photographer for the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons, both of whom had made phone calls to the notorious counterrevolutionary terrorists of Cuban origin Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch Avila, their bosses in Caracas.

The killers confessed to planting the explosive devices in the plane, which they left in Barbados, subsequently fleeing to Trinidad and Tobago.

On October 15, the Venezuelan police reported the detention in Caracas of Posada and Bosch, as well as a raid on the former’s business, “where evidence was found of the link between the Venezuelans detained abroad and the said enterprise.”

Due to the overwhelming evidence against them, the four terrorists involved in the Barbados crime were sent to trial in Venezuela, charged with qualified homicide, among other crimes.

After a 10-year delay, on July 21, 1986 Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo were sentenced to a 20-year minimum term for qualified homicide.

Posada Carriles, who escaped from prison 11 months before the trial, did not receive any sentence.

For his part, Orlando Bosch was cleared as the judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence to support the charges against him.

In November 2000, Posada Carriles was arrested, tried and sentenced along with another three hired killers, Pedro Crispin Remón, Gaspar Jiménez Escobedo and Guillermo Novo Sampol for conspiring to assassinate President Fidel Castro in the framework of the 10th Ibero-American Summit in Panama.

The terrorists were planning to assassinate Fidel during a public event in the University of Panama auditorium, where thousands of students and academics would have died as a result of the destructive effect of eight kilograms of C-4 military-use plastic explosive.

Nevertheless, once again justice has become a pending issue. This time the impunity was accompanied by the complicity of former Panamanian president Mireya Moscoso, who granted a pardon to these notorious and self-confessed terrorists in the early hours of August 26 this year.

The “disappearance” operation began a few hours after receiving the presidential pardon, including the preparation of false passports and the hiring of one or two planes for their evacuation.

Today, the whereabouts of Posada Carriles is a mystery; it is merely known that he vanished after boarding a private flight under a false name to San Pedro Sula, 240 kilometers north of Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras.

The other three pardoned criminals and naturalized U.S. citizens who, like Posada, have collaborated with the CIA and covert operation specialists for more than 40 years, flew to the United States, where they were received as heroes by the Miami anti-Cuban mafia.

This whole plan of avoiding justice – in addition to the connivance of Mireya Moscoso and the possible participation of the Honduran authorities – required the creative hand of those “creatures” recruited and trained to execute acts of violence: the United States.

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