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Hijacker held after plane lands
02/04/2003 09:19 - (SA)
Miami - For the second time in two weeks, a hijacked Cuban airliner landed in Key West, Florida, this time 15 hours after a man saying he was armed with grenades seized the plane and demanded to be flown to the United States.
Authorities said the alleged hijacker was arrested after the Soviet-made Antonov-24 made a "safe landing" at Key West, the southernmost of a chain of islands in south Florida.
In Cuba, authorities identified the hijacker as Adelmis Wilson Gonzalez and described him as having "a serious criminal record."
The Cubana de Aviacion plane spent about 12 tense hours on the tarmac in Havana, where a group of passengers jumped out a rear window after the ageing aircraft was refuelled on Tuesday morning.
One woman leapt to safety with a child in her arms, witnesses said.
The plane, which initially had 46 people on board, was on a short domestic flight from the Isle of Youth to Havana late Monday when the hijacker ordered the crew to head to Miami but was told there was not enough fuel for the 500km trip.
The twin-prop plane landed on Monday night at Havana's Jose Marti International Airport to refuel.
A fuel truck spent nearly two hours next to the aircraft early on Tuesday, after authorities negotiated through the night with the hijacker, who said he had two hand grenades, which he would detonate if he was not flown to Miami.
All flights in and out of the airport were cancelled while the plane remained on the tarmac, and inconvenienced passengers were put up at hotels in Havana.
"This act is the direct result of the encouragement US authorities have given hijackers with their incomprehensible behavior in the wake of the March 19 hijacking of a DC-3 airliner to the United States by six terrorists armed with knives," Cuban authorities said in a statement issued while the plane was still in Havana.
The statement referred to the March 19 hijacking to Florida of another Cuban airliner with 33 people on board after it also flew out of the Island of Youth.
US fighter jets intercepted that plane and forced to land in Key West, where the hijackers were taken into custody. Eleven of the passengers sought political asylum in the United States; the rest returned to Cuba.
A US judge later ruled that the six hijackers could be released on $25 000 bail pending trial, but the decision is being appealed.
Cuban President Fidel Castro criticised the judge's decision and asked if the United States planned to put the six hijackers in a "gilded cage", wondering how their treatment would compare with spartan conditions for suspected al-Qaeda and Taliban members confined at the US base in Guantanamo, Cuba.
Cuba has been staunchly critical of the US policy of granting asylum and US residence to any Cuban who manages to set foot on US soil - such as the 11 passengers on the March 19 flight. Those intercepted on the high seas are returned to the communist-ruled island.
In Washington, the state department rejected Havana's complaints that liberal US asylum laws for Cubans encouraged such illegal acts and said its top diplomat in Cuba had sought to dissuade the hijacker.
"I would note that...Cuba has experienced two hijackings in two weeks, indicating serious deficiencies in their airport security," deputy spokesperson Philip Reeker said.
"While Cuban police have been arresting some 90 democracy and human rights activists and independent journalists and librarians, they have hijackings taking place at their airports," he told reporters.
"So this serious political repression that is going on, probably the worst to take place in this hemisphere in the last decade, might make Cuban authorities to think about not being distracted by arresting their fellow citizens for seeking their fundamental rights," Reeker said.
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