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CUBA: Soldiers Accused of Hijacking Could Face Death Penalty

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, May 8 2007 (IPS) - Two Cuban soldiers who attempted to hijack an airplane to fly to the United States are both wounded and awaiting trial, Cuban President Fidel Castro announced Tuesday, while accusing the United States of fomenting illegal emigration.

“A great deal of serenity and sangfroid are needed to face these issues,” said the convalescent Castro, 80, in an article published on the front page of Granma, the newspaper of Cuba’s governing Communist Party. It is the fifth he has written in the last two months.

According to the initial reports, three armed conscripts doing their two years’ military service, which is obligatory for young men in Cuba, escaped from a military base on Apr. 29, killing another conscript on guard duty, Yoendris Gutiérrez, and wounding an unnamed soldier in the process.

One of the three deserters was arrested and “revealed that their purpose was to leave the country illegally.” The other two hijacked a public city bus, with several passengers on board, and sped to the domestic flights terminal of Havana’s José Martí International Airport.

After boarding an airplane, “the murderers killed with four shots one of the hostages, Lieutenant Colonel Víctor Ibo Acuña Velázquez of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), who despite being unarmed, heroically tried to prevent the terrorist action,” a communiqué from the Cuban Interior Ministry said on May 3.

A few days earlier, the police had circulated photographs of the three deserters, identified as Yoan Torres Martínez, 21, Alain Forbus Lameru, 19, and Leandro Cerezo Sirut, also 19.

Dissident leaders told IPS that relatives of the fugitives said Forbus Lameru was the first to be imprisoned, which would imply that Cerezo Sirut and Torres Martínez were the presumptive suspects of the alleged events at the airport. The Interior Ministry communiqué did not mention any of their names.

Castro gave further details, hitherto unknown, about the case, which he links with the Apr. 19 release of Cuban anti-Castro terrorist Luis Posada Carriles from U.S. custody on bond.

The two soldiers involved in the hijacking attempt have not yet been tried because both were wounded during the incident, one of them by shots fired by the other inside the plane, Castro said.

The wording of the disclosure seems to imply that the deserters may face a different kind of trial from that of the Cubans who hijacked a ferry, kidnapping the passengers, in April 2003. Three of them received the death penalty.

Observers pointed out that Castro referred to the soldiers as “two young people” who committed crimes as a result of “aspiring to enjoy U.S. consumerism.” In contrast, the earlier Interior Ministry report called them “criminals” and “murderers.”

Now many people in foreign countries are waiting for the reaction from the courts and the Council of State, at a time when the Cuban people are “profoundly indignant about what has happened,” Castro commented, perhaps foreseeing an international reaction similar to the one in 2003.

In his view, “the impunity and the material benefits that have rewarded all violent action against Cuba for nearly half a century stimulate such acts.” Nothing like this had happened in months, he wrote.

The 80-year-old Castro has been convalescing since intestinal surgery in July 2006, showing signs of gradual recovery since early 2007.

In April 2003, 11 armed individuals seized a ferry with dozens of passengers on board, with the aim of defecting to the United States. The hijackers were given a summary trial and three of the defendants, identified as the “most active and brutal ringleaders,” were sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out immediately.

The incident was part of a spate of hijackings by people attempting to defect to the United States. The Cuban government accused the U.S. of hatching a “sinister plan (to cause) provocation.”

With respect to the April 2003 passenger ferry hijacking, Castro said the death penalty had to be applied “without a moment’s hesitation” in order to strike at the root of a situation that was threatening national security.

The verdict drew adverse reactions even from staunch supporters of the Cuban revolution. In a lengthy interview that Castro gave to French journalist and editor Ignacio Ramonet in 2006, the Cuban leader said he believed Cuba was gradually moving towards a future in which the country would be in a position to abolish capital punishment.

The death penalty has not been applied in Cuba since April 2003. Under Cuban law, it cannot be imposed on people under 20 years of age, nor on women who were pregnant at the time of committing a crime or when they are sentenced.

Elizardo Sánchez of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, a dissident group, told IPS that “technically” the soldiers could be sentenced to death.

He pointed to the two murders committed by the soldiers, according to the official communiqué, and the attempted hijacking of an airplane, to which the law against terrorism could apply.