Updated October 8, 2013

“We’ve had an explosion and we’re descending immediately. We have fire on board!”

Above: Kornbluh on Luis Posada Carriles: Paid CIA Terror Bomber

“Most of our readers from the United States of America probably have no idea of the roll that their government played in the bombing of a Cubana airliner full of innocent people. After all these years, many of the declassified documents from American government archives proves the US involvement.”

UPDATED: October 8, 2013

Barbados and Cuba have paid homage to the victims of the 1976 bombing of a Cubana Airlines jet off the coast of Barbados that killed all 73 people on board, lamenting the fact that the masterminds of the attack were never convicted.

Cuba’s Ambassador to Barbados, Lisette Perez Perez, told the wreath laying ceremony on Sunday that what happened to the Cubana passenger plane on October 6, 1976 was not an isolated incident.

She said that the masterminds behind of the attack, Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles were never convicted for this criminal act.

“Bosch passed away peacefully in Miami, where he lived in complete freedom (and) impunity, after being granted presidential pardon by (President) George Bush, which was negotiated by the Cuban far-right wing. A similar treatment was given to the other perpetrator of this abominable crime. Carriles was neither charged nor prosecuted in the United States,” she said.

The Cuban diplomat thanked Barbados for its support saying “there is a history of injustice in the waters of Paradise Beach in Barbados.

“The cold–blooded murder of the people on board that passenger plane was a crime against them, their families, and their countries. It was also a crime against Barbados and its people,” she added.

MORE: Jamaica Observer article Cuba, Barbados pay homage to 1976 bombing victims

Why didn’t the representative from the United States attend the 2013 Cubana memorial service in Barbados? Will the US attend in 2014?



Most of our readers from the United States of America probably have no idea of the roll that their government played in the bombing of a Cubana airliner full of innocent people. After all these years, many of the declassified documents from American government archives prove the US involvement.

Each of our good American readers owe it to themselves, to their country and to the world to investigate the Cubana bombing to the best of their ability. You can’t change what your government has done, and you probably can’t change the USA’s stonewalling of the truth – but you can know for yourself what the truth is…

33 34 35 36 37 years after the terror bombing of a Cuban airliner, the United States continues to protect the guilty

(Also see Rickey Singh’s October 5, 2010 article Revisiting the Cuban tragedy)

On October 6, 1976, anti-Castro terrorists murdered seventy-three people on Cubana Flight 455 off Barbados.

Declassified letters and reports (like below from FBI Director Clarence M. Kelley to Henry Kissenger) show that the United States Government knew of the plot beforehand and not only that: they knew exactly who was involved almost four months before the bombing.

For over three decades the US government has protected the terrorists. This outrage continues under the Obama Administration and undermines whatever moral authority the United States retains in the persecution of its war in Iraq – a “part-time hobby” war with no end in sight.

Further Reading

The National Security Archive (See declassified FBI & CIA documents)

Bombing of Cuban Jetliner, 30 years later

Luis Posada Carriles – The Declassified Record

Wikipedia: Cubana Flight 455

Barbados Free Press: Cubana Flight 455 Bombing – 30 Years Later USA Still Harbours A Terrorist

UPDATED: October 6, 2010

Here is the full article by Rickey Singh just in case the T&T Express loses their way in the future. Worth your time…

Revisiting the Cuban tragedy

By Rickey Singh

THIRTY-FOUR years ago today, terrorists blew up a Cubana passenger aircraft off Barbados, killing all 73 people on board, mostly Cubans but including 11 Guyanese and five North Koreans on their way to Havana.

For many years since that unprecedented Cubana tragedy in Caribbean airspace, there have been calls by the governments of Cuba and Venezuela, as well as Caricom, for the perpetrators to be brought to justice.

Specifically identified for a court trial has been the Cuban emigre Luis Posada Carriles, who had also acquired Venezuelan citizenship before his documented involvement as one of the primary plotters of the Cubana disaster and other escapades in terrorism.

Another of the plotters, exposed for his notorious roles in terrorism and link with the CIA in the Caribbean-Latin Americas region, including Chile under President Salvador Allende, was Orlando Bosch.

Like Posada, he continues to enjoy sanctuary in the USA—the superpower that never fails to remind the world of its commitment to democracy and the rule of law.

Long before Barack Obama wrote his name into 21st century history as the first-ever African-American US President and raised hopes for “fundamental changes” in how America conducts business at home and abroad, Caricom governments had appealed, in the name of justice and human decency, for Posada to face trial.

But, as had happened years earlier, in the case of Posada’s compatriot in crime, Bosch, there has been no such move by the justice administration system in the US.

On the contrary, since 1988, in the face of the decision by a US judge for his deportation as a terrorist, “unfettered by law and human decency”, Bosch was to be taken into Uncle Sam’s protective political care—thanks to the presidential pardon received from the elder George Bush as then occupant of the White House.

Disclosures of the terroristic activities of both Bosch and Posada as agents of the CIA working with the anti-Fidel Castro community of Cuban exiles has been accessed from records of the CIA and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) themselves.

Today, therefore, as the people of Barbados and the rest of Caricom join Cuba in silent remembrance of the victims of the Cubana tragedy, it would be difficult to ignore the double standard, the sheer political hypocrisy, of “Uncle Sam” in its selective execution of bilateral extradition treaties.

The classic example, best known by Jamaicans, and too recent for the entire Caricom region to ignore, is the extradition case involving Christopher “Dudus” Coke, currently a prisoner of the US on charges of drug trafficking and gun-running.

This internationally publicised extradition of a Jamaican drug lord, that resulted from extreme pressures by Uncle Sam, has posed tremendous problems for the authorities in Kingston with current debate on its ultimate impact on the longevity of the Bruce Golding administration.

Yet, in sharp contrast, and with no intent to rationalise criminality, it is quite relevant to note the utter hypocrisy of the US in how it responds to extradition cases.

Currently, while the people and government of Jamaica are coping with the consequences of uprooting, on Uncle Sam’s demand, Coke from his Tivoli Gardens stronghold and extradite him for trial in America, there continues to be open contempt by US authorities for the requested extradition by both Cuba and Venezuela, of Posada Carriles—if not Bosch as well—for involvement in the Cubana tragedy 34 years ago today.

There needs to be a response from the “time-for-change” President Obama to revisit the cases of the two Cuban emigres being protected in America and known to be integrally linked with the Cubana tragedy as agents of the CIA.