Latest update November 15th, 2024 1:00 AM
Cubana Air Disaster victims remembered 34 years later
Cuban Ambassador Raul Gortazar- Merrero laid a wreath in commemoration of 34th anniversary of the Cubana Air Disaster.
In remembrance of the 34th anniversary of the Cubana Air Disaster, a simple but significant wreath laying ceremony was held at the Cuban Embassy compound, High Street, Kingston, yesterday.
Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, Cuba’s ambassador Raul Gortazar- Merrero, Venezuela’s Ministry Attaché Brigadier General, Roberto De Luca and Guyana Cuba Friendship Association President Samuel Abdool, dubbed the bombing of the Cubana aircraft “one of the worst terrorist acts to date in the western hemisphere.”
The Cuban Ambassador Raul Gortazar- Merrero said that 34 years ago in Cuba, at Square of the Revolution, the people of Cuba were bidding farewell to a quantity of coffins bearing fragments and remains of personal belongings, “over a million Cubans with tears in their eyes were saying goodbye in a symbolic way to their brothers who disappeared whose bodies lie at the bottom of the ocean as a consequence of the blowing up of the aircraft of the Cuban aviation in flight.”
The Ambassador noted that his country’s identification with the peoples of Guyana is even more significant with the Cuban and Guyanese blood joined forever on October 6, 1976 as a uniting factor for both countries.
He chided the US Government’s double standards. He added that Hernan Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, two Venezuelan mercenaries, placed the bomb on the airplane during a journey from Trinidad & Tobago to Barbados.
Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch, intellectual perpetrators of terrorist crime, linked to the CIA from 1960, were arrested and subjected to a plagued tortuous process of irregularities in the midst of colossal pressures.
General Elio Garcia Barrios, President of the court, sentenced both terrorists to a prison term of several years. The Miami terrorist mafia avenged with the shooting to death of one of his children in 1983.
The Cuban ambassador said Posada was rescued by the Cuban American National Foundation, which he said sent $50,000 from Panama to finance the leak; and they escaped on August 18, 1985.
In a matter of hours they appeared in El Salvador. There they were visited just after arriving by leaders of the Cuban American National Foundation.
“Today the confessed murderer, Luis Posada Carriles walks freely on the streets of Miami and in several interviews he presented cynicism publicly that if he were to be born again he would make the Cuban aircraft crash again”
According to Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, the entire hemisphere was shaken by this atrocity at that time. The small developing nations of the Caribbean were struck at the heart of “our collective sovereignty. This was an attack that brought the face of terrorism to Guyana and the Caribbean.”
The Prime Minister regretted that the event was not held at a suitable monument; however, the government of Guyana is committed to the fulfillment of its promise to erect a monument in memory of the Cubana disaster on the Campus of the University of Guyana between the landscape pond and the library building, which is 50 per cent complete.
Adding that the countries of the Caribbean are united with Cuba, the Prime Minister said the Government of Guyana reaffirms its unequivocal condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations.
Venezuela’s Ministry Attaché Brigadier General, Roberto De Luca said, every October 6, constitutes a motive for pain in this country but also a permanent accusation against the authors of the enormous crime to pay for their acts, because aided by the government of the United States they stroll freely in territory of the North American Nation.
Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carilles were responsible for the disastrous event and the true justice continues without being summoned by the double successive administration that proclaims to be antiterrorism.
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