AN­GE­LO JE­DIDI­AH

Re­porter

an­ge­lo.je­didi­ah@guardian.co.tt

It was sup­posed to be just an­oth­er rou­tine flight. In­stead, a ter­ror at­tack on Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 end­ed with 73 lives lost and a re­gion left in shock. As the Caribbean mourned, Trinidad and To­ba­go leapt in­to ac­tion – un­rav­el­ling the plot, ex­pos­ing the per­pe­tra­tors and lead­ing the charge for jus­tice.

On Wednes­day, 6 Oc­to­ber 1976, one of the most promi­nent acts of ter­ror­ism in the re­gion un­fold­ed. Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 was fly­ing its reg­u­lar sched­uled route from Guyana to Ha­vana, Cu­ba.

In Guyana, the DC-8 air­craft picked up its first pas­sen­gers, in­clud­ing six Guyanese stu­dents who had won schol­ar­ships to study med­i­cine in Cu­ba.

Its first stop was at Pi­ar­co, Trinidad.

Among those who board­ed were 24 mem­bers of Cu­ba’s youth fenc­ing team, ea­ger to show off their medals af­ter win­ning the Cen­tral Amer­i­can Cham­pi­onship in Cara­cas days ear­li­er.

How­ev­er, two oth­er pas­sen­gers board­ed in Trinidad. They were Venezue­lan cit­i­zens Fred­dy Lu­go and Hernán Ri­car­do Lozano. Re­ports claim they were of­fered avail­able seats on an ear­li­er BWIA flight to Bar­ba­dos but in­sist­ed on tak­ing the Cubana air­craft in­stead.

The flight’s sec­ond stop was Bar­ba­dos, where Lu­go and Lozano dis­em­barked, aban­don­ing the re­main­der of the route to Ja­maica and Cu­ba. Be­fore step­ping off, they had se­cret­ly plant­ed plas­tic ex­plo­sives in­side a Col­gate tooth­paste tube, fit­ted with a pen­cil det­o­na­tor in the air­craft’s rear lava­to­ry.

At 5:15 pm, the air­craft took off once more. Just eight to 11 min­utes in­to the flight, the hid­den bombs ex­plod­ed, killing 57 Cubans, 11 Guyanese and five North Ko­re­ans. There were no sur­vivors.

And as one can imag­ine, the pain of the tragedy cut deep across the re­gion, leav­ing Cu­ba in tears over an at­tack be­lieved to tar­get the Cas­tro regime.

Ac­cord­ing to Cu­ba’s am­bas­sador to T&T, Gus­ta­vo Daniel Vél­iz Oli­vares, the at­tack oc­curred against a back­drop of more than a decade of vi­o­lence fol­low­ing the 1959 Rev­o­lu­tion.

“This is not an iso­lat­ed in­ci­dent,” Oli­vare told Guardian Me­dia.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly Cu­ba for more than 60 years–I mean, since the very be­gin­ning of the rev­o­lu­tion, Cu­ba was af­fect­ed by sev­er­al ter­ror­ist acts against Cuban peo­ple.”

He added that the 1976 bomb­ing re­mained deeply painful for the Cuban peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en the youth of those on board.

“Those young peo­ple. So young. They had a suc­cess­ful par­tic­i­pa­tion at this sports com­pe­ti­tion. Some of those peo­ple were less than 20 years old.”

Though T&T lost no cit­i­zens on Flight 455, the coun­try be­came in­stru­men­tal in solv­ing the puz­zle and ap­pre­hend­ing the per­pe­tra­tors.

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS) quick­ly be­gan piec­ing to­geth­er the time­line. Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, his­to­ri­an Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh re­counts that then as­sis­tant com­mis­sion­er Ran­dolph Bur­roughs, deputy com­mis­sion­er Den­nis Ramd­war and a team of de­tec­tives sprang in­to ac­tion as soon as news broke of the crash off the coast of Bar­ba­dos.

Their first lead took them to the Hol­i­day Inn on Wright­son Road (now the Radis­son Ho­tel), where they were be­lieved to be stay­ing af­ter re­turn­ing im­me­di­ate­ly from Bar­ba­dos. These were the same men who had plant­ed the bombs on the ill-fat­ed Cuban air­craft be­fore dis­em­bark­ing in Bar­ba­dos and re­turn­ing im­me­di­ate­ly to Trinidad.

“What I have seen from the cor­re­spon­dence from our po­lice sta­tions is that Bur­roughs and these de­tec­tives went to Hol­i­day Inn Ho­tel and they checked the records by the re­cep­tion desk. And they saw two names. Of course, these were fake names,” Dr Teelucks­ingh said.

“Bur­roughs, on fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tion, went to the Pi­ar­co Air­port and al­so checked im­mi­gra­tion. So he’s do­ing the ground­work. From Pi­ar­co, he came back to the ho­tel with de­tec­tives. I think it was room 1105, and he start­ed in­ter­ro­gat­ing these two men.”

The men pre­sent­ed fake pass­ports and alias­es.

“In­ter­est­ing­ly, Bur­roughs and the de­tec­tives asked to see their suit­cas­es to check, and both men said that they lost their suit­cas­es in Bar­ba­dos. Bur­roughs asked them if they re­port­ed it to the Bar­ba­dos au­thor­i­ties. And they said ‘no’ be­cause the peo­ple in Bar­ba­dos don’t un­der­stand Span­ish and they don’t un­der­stand Eng­lish. So all this would have been red flags for Bur­roughs.”

The men were prompt­ly ar­rest­ed by lo­cal po­lice on sus­pi­cion of plant­i­ng the bomb.

But the in­ves­ti­ga­tion was not com­plete, as the re­gion was drawn in­to an in­ter­na­tion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The in­ter­na­tion­al in­ves­ti­ga­tion quick­ly ex­pand­ed be­yond T&T’s bor­ders. Bur­roughs flew di­rect­ly to Bar­ba­dos to gath­er ev­i­dence, while Ramd­war trav­elled to Cara­cas, Venezuela.

In Venezuela, their lo­cal au­thor­i­ties ar­rest­ed Cuban ex­ile leader Or­lan­do Bosch and fel­low ex­ile Luis Posa­da Car­riles, iden­ti­fied by Cu­ba as an­ti-Cas­tro ter­ror­ists and the mas­ter­minds be­hind the at­tack.

While Bosch was ul­ti­mate­ly ac­quit­ted in Venezuela and Car­riles es­caped from prison be­fore a ver­dict could be de­liv­ered against him, Fred­dy Lu­go and Hernán Ri­car­do were con­vict­ed and each sen­tenced to 20 years in prison.

Dr Teelucks­ingh em­pha­sis­es that T&T, Bur­roughs and the TTPS de­serve full cred­it for their piv­otal role in crack­ing a case that might oth­er­wise have gone cold af­ter ter­ror­ists used Trinidad as a launch­ing pad and hub for their at­tack.

“Bur­roughs and them could have turned a blind eye, you know…our po­lice ser­vice didn’t sit in Trinidad. They ac­tu­al­ly sent Bur­rows to Bar­ba­dos.”

“I think it speaks vol­umes about our crime-fight­ing skills in the ’70s.”

Be­yond want­i­ng Venezuela to for­mal­ly apol­o­gise for har­bour­ing the mas­ter­minds, Dr Teelucks­ingh al­so be­lieves in­ter­na­tion­al agen­cies should recog­nise the coun­try’s con­tri­bu­tion:

“I would al­so like to see the CIA and FBI, for­mal­ly ac­knowl­edge T&T’s role. You know, they didn’t get any recog­ni­tion, we didn’t get any medals…And we played a very im­por­tant role.”

For Cu­ba, how­ev­er, the sto­ry of Flight 455 did not end with the crash.

As the tragedy this year marks its 50th an­niver­sary, Am­bas­sador Oli­vares notes that the vic­tims re­main firm­ly in the coun­try’s col­lec­tive mem­o­ry, ho­n­oured through an­nu­al com­mem­o­ra­tions. In 2014, a memo­r­i­al plaque was in­stalled at Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port to com­mem­o­rate T&T’s sol­i­dar­i­ty with Cu­ba.

While no Trin­bag­o­ni­ans per­ished dur­ing the at­tack, Oli­vare says this hor­rif­ic in­ci­dent is a mem­o­ry that Cu­ba hopes the Caribbean will con­tin­ue to car­ry for­ward.

“Peo­ple in T&T should know about the in­ci­dent. Every coun­try around the world can be af­fect­ed by ter­ror­ism. I think it’s very im­por­tant that every­body in T&T and in the Caribbean know that that hap­pened and re­mem­ber that un­for­tu­nate in­ci­dent.”