Los Angeles Times. Wednesday, September 20, 2000
LOS PALACIOS, Cuba--The pilot of a small plane which flew out of Cuba with passengers on board lied about being hijacked and was really seeking asylum in the United States, his former colleague said Wednesday.
Flight engineer Juan Jose Galiano Cabrera had initially accompanied the pilot, Lenin Iglesias, when they set out for work together on Tuesday aboard a Soviet-built Antonov An-2 crop-duster in western Pinar del Rio province.
Galiano told Reuters in Los Palacios, about 60 miles west of Havana, that Iglesias had persuaded him to stay behind at a landing strip by telling him a lie about going to pick up a check.
He then flew on to another strip, picked up family and friends, and headed north for the United States. Soon after leaving, Iglesias radioed that he was being hijacked.
"He tricked me ... the hijack thing was a lie ... I never suspected that he would run away," Galiano said. Cuban authorities had not previously made clear whether they were treating the case as a genuine hijack or as an illegal attempt to leave the communist-ruled Caribbean
island.
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