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CUBA
NEWS
Yahoo!
Cuban rights group speaks out against
death penalty in attempted hijacking, desertion
case
By Will Weissert, Associated
Press, Writer May 7, 2007.
HAVANA - A leading Cuban human rights group
on Monday urged governments around the world
to petition Havana to spare the lives of
army deserters who could face a firing squad
for allegedly killing soldiers as they fled
military bases.
The statement by the non-governmental Cuban
Commission for Human Rights and National
Reconciliation referred to a deadly attempted
hijacking at Havana's main airport last
week, as well as a previously unreported
December shootout and escape in eastern
Cuba.
Signed by veteran human rights activist
Elizardo Sanchez, the statement noted that
Cuban military law calls for capital punishment
for deserters older than 20. The two cases
of escaped soldiers involved six men, only
two of whom were old enough to face a death
penalty.
The statement called on organizations and
governments around the world to protest
capital punishment in Cuba, where several
dozen prisoners are on death row.
The government's swift execution of three
men convicted of hijacking a Havana passenger
ferry in April 2003 - a case in which no
one was killed - led to international protests,
which were largely ignored by Cuban authorities.
The government also almost always ignores
what Sanchez says and refuses to legally
recognize his committee.
In the most recent case of desertion, three
conscripts shot their way out of the Managua
base southeast of the Cuban capital in late
April, killing at least one soldier.
They avoided capture until they allegedly
commandeered a city bus before dawn Thursday,
forced it to drive to the airport and loaded
eight of its passengers aboard an empty
jetliner they demanded be flown to the United
States.
Officials say they shot and killed an army
officer who had been on the bus before a
gunbattle at the airport led to the capture
of two of the escaped soldiers. The third
soldier was arrested earlier.
It was unclear which of the three soldiers
was 21.
The earlier desertion came on Dec. 20,
when three soldiers killed two Interior
Ministry officials and made off with machine
guns in fleeing El Manguito garrison near
Santiago, 525 miles east of Havana, according
to the committee.
The suspects were captured a short distance
away following an "intense military
operation," it added, saying only one
of them was 21. Cuba's government has not
reported the incident.
Castro blames hijacking attempt on U.S.
By Anita Snow, Associated
Press Writer Tue May 8, 2007.
HAVANA - Convalescing Cuban leader Fidel
Castro blamed an airliner hijack attempt
on the United States, saying in a statement
published Tuesday that two soldiers who
seized a plane and killed an officer thought
they would escape punishment if they reached
U.S. soil.
Castro linked the failed attempt to the
recent release of anti-communist militant
Luis Posada Carriles from U.S. custody on
bond. Cuba's Foreign Ministry distributed
Castro's statement to international reporters
by e-mail late Monday and it was published
Tuesday in the Communist Party daily Granma.
The hijacking, 80-year-old leader declared,
was "a consequence of freeing the monster
of terror."
"The impunity and the material benefits
that have been rewarded for nearly half
a century for all violent action against
Cuba stimulate such acts," he wrote.
Cuba for weeks has protested a U.S. judge's
decision to release Posada on bond pending
a hearing on immigration fraud charges scheduled
for Friday. He is being held under house
arrest at his family's home in Miami, and
is wearing an electronic monitoring device.
Cuba and Venezuela accuse him of masterminding
a 1976 Cubana airliner bombing that killed
73 people, and Venezuela is seeking his
extradition for trial in that case. Cuba
also accuses him of orchestrating a string
of 1997 Havana hotel bombings, including
one that killed an Italian tourist.
Posada denies involvement in both cases.
Castro has not been seen in public since
July, when he announced he had undergone
emergency intestinal surgery and ceded his
presidential functions to his 75-year-old
brother Raul, the defense minister.
The elder Castro has been shown occasionally
in official photographs and videos since,
appearing stronger in recent images, and
since late March he has penned a series
of columns titled "Reflections of the
Commander in Chief."
In the new column, Castro wrote that the
two soldiers involved in the Thursday morning
hijacking attempt had not yet been tried
because both were wounded, one of them shot.
Although Cuba now rarely employs the death
penalty, the non-governmental Cuban Commission
for Human Rights and National Reconciliation
on Monday urged governments around the world
to petition Havana not to send the would-be
hijackers to a firing squad.
Castro wrote that the Cuban people were
"profoundly indignant over what has
happened" and added, "A great
deal of serenity and cold blood are needed
to face these issues."
The two soldiers were among three who earlier
escaped from their military post, killing
a sentry and wounding a second before fleeing
with automatic rifles.
One was captured before the hijacking attempt.
But officials said the other two commandeered
a city bus with eight people aboard, forced
the driver to travel to the Havana airport
and marched the group onto an empty plane
and demanded to be flown to the United States.
While on the craft, an army lieutenant
colonel who had been on the bus was shot
four times and killed when he tried to stop
the defecting soldiers, Castro's statement
said.
U.S. to build Cuba migrant center
AP via Yahoo! News - May
8, 2007.
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - The United States,
which has been planning for possible waves
of fleeing Cubans when Fidel Castro dies,
has hired a Florida company to build a temporary
complex to hold migrants at the Guantanamo
Bay Naval Base, the military said.
Islands Mechanical Contractors Inc. of
Jacksonville, Fla., has won a $16.5 million
contract to build a "migrant operations
complex" at the base, a U.S. enclave
in eastern Cuba, the U.S. Defense Department
said.
The fenced complex would include showers
and laundry facilities and is to be finished
by May 2008, according to a Defense Department
publication that announces contracts.
The announcement late Monday did not specify
the capacity of the complex and a Defense
Department spokesman said additional details
were not immediately available. Bob Turnage,
the president of Islands Mechanical, declined
to discuss the project.
The contract announcement did not specify
that the complex would be for Cuban migrants,
but Navy officials told The Associated Press
in January that they were preparing for
a potential Cuban exodus because of Castro's
health problems and would hold migrants
at Guantanamo, where the U.S. also has detained
about 380 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida
or the Taliban.
Guantanamo was used to hold thousands of
Haitian and Cuban migrants in the 1990s.
U.S. officials had said they would keep
the migrants on the other side of the base
from the detainees and would have to increase
troop levels to provide additional security.
'Fierce' gun battle at Havana airport
HAVANA, 3 (AFP) - A fierce gun battle broke
out at Havana's Jose Marti airport Thursday
between police and three fugitive soldiers
attempting to commandeer an airplane to
leave the country, an airport source told
AFP.
"Now everything everything is under
control, but there was a fierce gunfight,"
the source said, saying the men were riding
a bus toward a Boeing 737 at the Terminal
1 when the shooting took place.
There was no official government confirmation
of the incident or information on casualties,
but an airport official who would not be
identified told AFP that everything was
normal at the airport.
The three men, young conscripts who fled
their military unit Saturday near Managua
southeast of Havana, were "neutralized"
by the police, according to an airport worker.
The incident took place early Thursday
when the men seized several hostages in
seeking to take over an aircraft which had
arrived from Santiago de Cuba at the east
end of the island.
"The plane had arrived from Santiago
and fortunately all the passengers had already
gotten off. Only the crew were left, who
then escaped through the front hatch. They
were thinking the kidnappers wanted to leave
the country."
Since the weekend Havana has been abuzz
with talk of the three soldiers and security
was tightened on roads into the capital.
In 2003 a Russia AN-24 with 31 people aboard
was taken over and forced to fly to the
United States by a man armed with grenades,
who was ultimately detained without incident
after the plan landed in Key West, Florida.
Cuba Reports Failed Hijacking
AP via Yahoo! Asia News
- May 03, 2007.
Fugitive army recruits tried to hijack
a plane to the United States and killed
a military officer they took hostage in
the failed attempt early Thursday, the Interior
Ministry said.
Two of the escaped recruits were arrested
after Army Lt. Col. Victor Ibo Acuna Velazquez
was killed in the aborted hijack that began
in the pre-dawn hours when they commandeered
a bus carrying several passengers to get
to a plane on the tarmac, said a ministry
statement.
"Despite being unarmed, he heroically
tried to prevent the commission of the terrorist
act," the statement said of the officer
killed. Others who had been held hostage
on the bus were unharmed, it added.
Throughout the day Thursday, there were
rampant rumors of a shooting at the airport
but the Cuban government and its official
media were silent.
There had been a massive manhunt under
way for three army recruits sought after
fleeing their base. The two arrested were
among three army recruits who escaped from
their military base on Sunday after killing
a fellow soldier and wounding another. The
third was captured earlier, the ministry
statement said.
The Defense Ministry over the weekend distributed
wanted circulars around Havana, describing
the fugitive recruits as armed and dangerous
and saying they were sought for abandoning
their posts. Some circulars were displayed
in public places, including post offices.
The men, all from the eastern province
of Camaguey, were identified as Leandro
Cerezo Sirut and Alain Forbus Lameru, both
19, and Yoan Torres Martinez, 21.
Several baggage handlers told an Associated
Press reporter who visited the airport that
police had told them to tell anyone who
asked to say that nothing had happened there
that morning. Even so, none of them had
appeared to have heard or seen the pre-dawn
incident.
Later Thursday, all was calm and there
was no increased police presence at the
airport's Terminal 2.
About 150 people who lined up outside the
terminal for their outgoing flights, or
waited for loved ones to arrive from the
United States, seemed oblivious that anything
may have occurred there earlier.
Two departures Miami and one to New York
later in the day were listed on time, as
were the scheduled arrivals from those cities.
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