THE EDITOR: We wish to remind readers that in this month (October) in 1976 a terrorist bomb exploded on a Cuban plane in full flight off Barbados. Furthermore, we point out that the same bombers continue their nefarious activities up to now.

All 73 persons on board the plane died: 53 Cubans, 11 Guyanese and five North Koreans. As described fully in Crime in Barbados by Nicanor Leon Cotayo, Trinidad police intercepted Venezuelan nationals Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo Losano and amassed more than 50 pieces of information pointing to sabotage. For example Losano had in his possession blueprints of Cuban embassy buildings.

He confessed to planting explosives on the plane. Lugo and Losano boarded the flight at Piarco, ostensibly to go to Jamaica, but they left the plane at Barbados and returned to Trinidad, checking in at the Holiday Inn (now Crowne Plaza) where the police arrested them.
Before their arrest, the suspects had telephoned known anti-Cuban terrorists in Venezuela.

The calls, together with other circumstantial evidence, led Venezuela to arrest Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch — two Cuban-born naturalised Venezuelans — for masterminding the attack.

Then as now, it was observed that all anti-Cuban terrorists knew each other. There was a continent-wide terrorist network. The inquiry in Barbados, using British and Cuban forensic scientists, revealed that a high-powered nitroglycerine bomb was responsible for the explosion.

The Venezuelan President, Carlos Andres Perez, with the support of Venezuelan civil society groups, expressed a willingness to clear up the anti-Cuban terrorist groups in Venezuela and punish those responsible for the Barbados crime.

Witnesses and police from Barbados, Trinidad, and Venezuela testified at the trial in Venezuela of Lugo, Losano, Carriles, and Bosch. Participation of others in the crime was investigated by the court. Trinidad sent 200 folios of evidence. Long sentences were handed down. Carriles escaped from prison in Venezuela. Later he admitted in the New York Times to having organised the 1997 bombing of tourist locations in Cuba.

US authorities did not make the slightest effort to detain him.

Bosch was freed-apparently due to the intervention of his friend Otto Reich, an anti-Cuban whom George Bush Jr appointed as US Under-Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs after Bush’s 2,000 election.

Bosch later boasted of having ordered an assassination from inside the Venezuelan jail.

Bosch was implicated in the earlier assassination of former Chilean minister Orlando Letailer and human rights activist Ronnie Moffit.

Bosch was convinced in 1968 of an artillery attack on a Polish ship in Miami port. He was sentenced to ten years and released on parole in 1972. Despite that, Bosch was not only allowed to live in the US; he was also given a presidential pardon by George Bush Sr for crimes committed.

Carriles was held in Panama in November 2000 with three others for the attempted bombing, in that month, of the auditorium at the University of Panama during a meeting between the Cuban President and university lecturers, students and social organisations.

Panamanian organisations representing those who would have been killed, filed charges stating that the 40 kilos of C-4 explosives found in the detainees’ possession would have killed President Castro, most of the 2,000 people present in the auditorium, and hundreds more who happened to be on the university campus. Panamanian and Cuban security forces thwarted the attack.

Filmed material and tapes of the terrorists themselves confessing to their crimes were found.
Cuba requested the extradition of the four to Cuba for trial on crimes committed prior to the Panama attack but so far this has been refused.

On July 7, 2002, the Cuban newspaper (Granma (from which much of the material in this article by the Trinidad and Tobago Friends of Cuba is gleaned) reported that the Panamanian Supreme Court of Justice has permanently rejected the suits arising from the auditorium attack.

After July 7, Carriles was being held, complaining of ill health, in an “open-air” prison, El Renacer. This has given rise to speculation that he may escape again. All this while, friends from Miami continually visit and lobby for his release. So, now who are the “Miami Five”?

These are five Cubans living in Miami who decided to find out what terrorist acts the anti-Cuban organisations in Miami are planning.
They were arrested on September 12, 1998 for alleged spying.

Top US military officers testified in the trial that the accused did not steal any US military secrets. However, the jury, continually threatened by the anti-Cuba groups during the trial, convicted them.
They are presently in jail for long terms-some up to life imprisonment.

President Bush has said, "You are either with us or you are with the terrorists," President Castro has responded in October 2001, “We are against war and we are against terrorism."

One thing that must happen in this battle of ideas is the inevitable overturning of the sentences of the Miami Five who, by their own admission, were merely trying to gather information which would forewarn others of impending terrorist acts. And that is where we are now, as of October 2002.

LAURENCE BROWN
President
TT Friends of Cuba