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Sunday October 5 will be the 38th anniversary of the bombing of Cubana Flight 455
http://www.freethefive.org/updates/USMedia/USM455Pertierra101111.htm
<snip>
It was a peaceful Wednesday afternoon in Barbados 35 years ago. Dalton Guiller had just finished a round of waterskiing and was refueling his boat on shore when a roar in the sky startled him. A low-flying and apparently damaged airliner was fast approaching from the west toward the beach. “It didn’t look right. It was too low. I then saw the plane rise slightly, bank to the right and crash into the water: nose and wing first,” said Guiller.
The aircraft was a DC-8, flown by Cubana de Aviación. It had received its regular maintenance only 10 days earlier and carried 73 persons the day it crashed. The average age on board was a mere 30 years of age, because 24 members of the Cuban fencing team were returning to Cuba after having swept the gold medals at the Pan American games in Caracas, Venezuela. They boarded the plane wearing their medals. In total, there were 57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese, and 5 Koreans.
At 1:23 p.m., local time, Seawell International Airport reported that the pilot, Wilfredo Pérez, called to report an emergency on board, “Seawell! Seawell! CU-455 Seawell. . . ! We have an explosion on board. . . . . We have a fire on board.” A forensic investigation made by Dr. Julio Lara Alonso established that two bombs exploded aboard CU-455, causing it to crash into the sea. The first bomb—under a passenger seat—ignited a fire near the front of the plane, and the second bomb, which exploded about eight minutes later in the rear bathroom of the plane, brought the plane down in seconds.
Two Venezuelan nationals, Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo, had left the bombs on the plane, before disembarking in Barbados. Lugo later told police officials that Ricardo boasted that the 73 people he killed on the plane were “more than the Jackal,” alluding to the famous terrorist Carlos the Jackal. “Now I’m the one who has the record, because I’m the one who blew up that thing,” he told Lugo.
Ricardo confessed to Barbadian and Trinidad officials who were investigating the crime that he and Lugo bombed the plane and that they worked for the CIA and Luis Posada Carriles. He even drew a diagram for them of the detonator he used to ignite the C-4 explosives he placed in the aircraft. He admitted to receiving $25,000 for downing the plane.
In 1985 Luis Posada Carriles was indicted and prosecuted as the mastermind of the murder of the 73 persons aboard that plane. But before the Venezuelan court could pronounce a verdict, he escaped from prison. Within a few weeks, he landed a job with the CIA in an operation that later became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. The United States has never bothered to explain how it was possible for an international fugitive charged with 73 counts of first-degree murder to so quickly land a $120,000-a-year job with the CIA, arming Nicaraguan Contras.
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Go back two years earlier when Kissinger arrived in Jamaica to stop Manley's relationship with Fidel and mostly to prevent the Cubans from assisting Africans against apartheid and other liberation struggles in Angola, Mozambique etc.
In the 1970s, Henry Kissinger gave orders to make the Jamaican economy scream because Jamaica had made friends with Cuba.
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20100418/focus/focus4.html
Professor Lewis agrees. He reasoned that the American Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was not pleased with Castro's support of the Movement for Popular Liberation of Angola (MPLA), Soviet-backed troops in the southern African country of Angola, which was then ruled by the American-backed UNITA regime.
Manley, who had risen up the ranks of the Non-Aligned Movement, also supported rebel troops in Angola. According to Professor Lewis, "The screws came on Jamaica after that."
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20050620/lead/lead6.html
Remember that 1976 was a big election in the US. Nixon was gone and Ford and Kissinger had plans - to bomb up Cuba after the election if ReTHUGs won.
They assassinated Allende on September 11, and then the Cubana flight was bombed on October 5 (the October surprise?)
And now we have this released this week
http://www.bbc.com/news/29441281
<snip>
US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger drew up plans to "smash Cuba" with air strikes nearly 40 years ago, government papers obtained by researchers show.
He was angered by Cuba's 1976 military intervention in Angola and was considering retaliation if Cuban forces were deployed elsewhere in Africa.
The information comes from documents declassified at the request of the National Security Archive.
They show that Mr Kissinger was eager for the US to stand up to Cuba.
The documents from the Gerald R Ford Presidential Library show that US officials devised plans to attack ports and military installations in Cuba in addition to measures ordered by Mr Kissinger to deploy Marine battalions based at the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay to "clobber" the Cubans.
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Why is Kissinger not in the Hague in a cell??? He is no statesman - he is a fucking butcher responsible for many many deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean.
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I lost a friend on that Cubana flight and will go to my grave condemning that horrific atrocity. Young, intelligent Caribbean citizens were slaughtered and I do not intend to forgive or forget.
