The date is an opportunity not only to remember those passengers, athletes and workers, who died in the attack, but all victims of terrorist acts against the island.

“A terrorist bomb, a killer bomb, like all bombs, transformed that plane into a symbol; a symbol of crime and siege, but that plane also strengthened a people in the midst of tears and anger, in the midst of the pain and outrage,” read Nile Jorge Prats Reyes, the grandson of Silvia Marta Pereira, who worked as an international flight attendant on the Cubana plane that the terrorists blew up midair.

The 17 year old also read a message from the Cuban Five to the victims’ relatives, noting that in order to avoid further tragedies such as this, “many Cubans left their homes and silently, in the enemy’s lair, weaved with their hands the defense of the homeland.”

Thalía Gattorno Espinosa is 12 years old. She never met her grandfather, Miguel Espinosa, as he was the co-pilot of that Cubana flight.

”The mastermind of this abominable crime lives peacefully in Miami and appears before the media in that city without showing any regret for the terrorist acts he committed and demonstrating his unconditional support for new attacks against the people of Cuba,” she said.

She also recalled the 3,478 Cubans who have been killed and the 2,099 who have suffered injuries and disabilities due to terrorist attacks on Cuban citizens, with the explicit support of previous U.S. administrations.

Accompanying the relatives were Omar Ruiz, member of the Secretariat of the Party Central Committee, Major General José A. Carrillo and Brigadier General Delsa Esther (Teté) Puebla, president and vice president of the Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, respectively.

(Granma)

A memo sent to then Secretary of State Henry Kissinger by two senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency, examines the allegations by the leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro Ruz regarding the involvement of U.S. agencies in the downing of the aircraft.

The document states that the CIA had links with three of those under investigation for their connections to the bombing, but states: “Any role that these people may have had with the demolition took place without the knowledge of the CIA.”

The text discusses in detail the links between the agency and those under investigation and directly quotes Hernán Ricardo Lozano and Freddy Lugo, who years later were sentenced as the perpetrators of the terrorist attack, having placed the bombs that exploded during the flight.

The document also discusses Luis Posada Carriles, who since 2005 has resided in the United States, without being extradited to Venezuela to stand trial for crimes committed there when he served as a repressor during the sixties and seventies, and was known as the fearsome “Commissioner Basilio”. Posada Carriles was a paid agent from March 13, 1965, as recorded in his personal file in the CIA archives, when he was assigned the codename AMCLEVE/15.

The CIA also admitted to having links with criminal Orlando Bosch Ávila, who died unpunished in Miami, where he lived since being pardoned by President George Bush, director of the CIA in 1976.

The agency also recognized its links to terrorist Francisco Eulalio Castro Paz, alias Frank Castro, a deputy of Bosch Ávila in the Cuban extremist organization Acción Cubana, who conspired in May 1977 – according to another declassified U.S. document – to bring down a Mexican plane taking off from Miami and heading to Havana, in order to intimidate passengers traveling to Cuba.

The document confirms that the CIA also had links to Orlando García Vázquez, a senior official of the repressive forces of Venezuela during the presidencies of Carlos Andrés Pérez, and with Ricardo Morales Navarrete, a mercenary of Cuban origin who the agency sent to the Belgian Congo as part of its intervention in the conflict in that country in 1965.

Morales Navarrete was then placed in the repressive forces of Venezuela, as part of the extensive program of U.S. counterinsurgency, which employed hundreds of Cuban immigrants as mercenaries in several countries across Latin America.

A censored version of the document, signed by Harold H. Saunders, director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the Department of State and the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, Harry W. Shlaudeman, already formed part of the National Security Archive’s collection, but it was declassified by the Office of the Historian of the State Department within a volume of documents concerning Central America and Mexico, dated between 1973 and 1976.

Cuba has denounced in many international bodies that the terrorist attack that downed the Cuban civilian flight was part of a conspiracy. This was the successful attempt, one among the 14 identified plans conceived by the terrorists of Cuban origin with knowledge of U.S. intelligence services.

On June 22, 1976, there was a plan to bring down a Cubana de Aviación flight leaving Panama and bound for Havana; on July 9 of that same year, they executed a similar attempt in Jamaica; in May 1977 the plan was directed against a plane from a Mexican airline; then a plane of the Spanish airline Iberia transported a bomb camouflaged in cans of powdered milk from Madrid, and Posada Carriles himself concocted similar plans when civilian planes from Central America bound for Cuba began to fly in the nineties.

Since the disclosure of the documents several months ago, no any legal action against terrorist Luis Posada Carriles has been initiated to investigate whether the statements of the State Department are valid. Historical impunity protects this and other Cuban extremists in the U.S., who persist in using violence for political ends.

(Granma)