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Deadly hijacking attempt
reflects younger Cubans' discontent
By South Florida Sun-Sentinel
and The Associated Press. Saturday, May
5, 2007.
HAVANA - The Cuban military officer killed
by a pair of escaped army recruits was buried
with his country's full military honors
Friday. Army Lt. Col. Victor Ibo Acuña
Velazquez, 41, was laid to rest in the western
provincial capital of Pinar del Rio and
posthumously awarded the Antonio Maceo Medal
of Valor, the island's top military honor.
Acuña, a communications engineer,
was among eight people held hostage for
at least four hours aboard a plane on the
tarmac at Jose Marti International Airport
and was killed while trying to disarm one
of the three young army deserters, all conscripts
from the eastern province of Camaguey.
Cuba analysts said the deadly hijacking
attempt reflected the discontent among the
island's young people. More than 20 percent
of Cuba's 11.4 million people were born
after the collapse of the Soviet Union in
1991 and the economic hardship that followed
the fall of Cuba's once-powerful benefactor.
At least one-third of the nearly 1 million
Cubans who have left the island for the
U.S. since Fidel Castro came to power in
1959 did so after 1999, according to a Pew
study of U.S. Census data.
"These were 19-, 21-year-old kids,
and they obviously felt extreme desperation
that they were willing to take those risks,"
said Brian Latell, a Cuba analyst and author
of "After Fidel: The Inside Story of
Castro's Regime and Cuba's Next Leader."
A government statement said the American
policy of letting most Cubans stay if they
reach U.S. soil encourages violent attempts
to leave this island, such as Thursday's
incident that led to the fatal shooting
of Acuña Velazquez by the two army
deserters.
The headline in the Communist Party newspaper
called the hijacking attempt an "act
of terror promoted by the United States."
The two hijackers were among the three
conscripts who deserted their base last
Saturday, killing an army guard with stolen
automatic rifles. The escape sparked a massive
manhunt, which ended in a blaze of gunfire
on the tarmac as two of the recruits tried
to hijack a plane to the United States.
The gunmen were captured later, and the
other hostages were unharmed.
The government statement said the third
deserter also had been captured, but it
provided few details.
The conscripts, all from the eastern province
of Camaguey, were identified as Leandro
Cerezo Sirut and Alain Forbus Lameru, both
19, and Yoan Torres Martinez, 21. It was
unclear which two were involved in the attempted
hijacking.
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Capital punishment in Cuba, always carried
out by firing squad, has been used sparingly
in recent years. But the death penalty seemed
likely in this case.
Four years ago, three men arrested for
the armed hijacking of a Cuban passenger
ferry were sentenced to death by a civilian
tribunal and sent before a firing squad
just nine days after that incident - even
though no one had been killed. The executions
in April 2003 were protested by governments
and human-rights groups worldwide.
Thursday's hijacking attempt was the first
involving a Cuban plane since 2003, when
an architect commandeered an airliner on
a domestic flight and diverted it to the
U.S. by brandishing fake grenades. A U.S.
court convicted him and sentenced him to
20 years in prison.
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