This day. The Barbados crime, Cubana flight 455 (I)

Memorial at the monument to the victims of the bombing of Cubana Flight 455, near Bridgetown, Barbados, October 4, 2014.

By TONY SEED

This article was first published in October 11, 2014 by TML Weekly and Global Research. It is of particular relevance to an understanding of the ongoing “war on terror” in the Americas, the role of successive US and Canadian governments, and Canada-Cuba relations. An expanded version with newly-researched material which will be posted in due course.

October 6 marks the 38th anniversary of the first act of terrorism against civilian aviation in the western hemisphere – the unparalleled Cubana Airlines disaster on the coastline of Barbados on October 6, 1976 – the Barbados crime. Cubana Flight 455 was hit by two C-4 explosives bombs just after the aircraft took off from the then Seawell Airport (now the Grantley Adams International Airport) in Barbados at an altitude of 18,000 feet.

Looking into the eyes of the terrorists who blew up a Cuban plane

40 YEARS SINCE THE BARBADOS CRIME

We planted the bomb… and so what?

By ALICIA HERRERA

Forty years after the bombing of a Cubana airlines flight off the coast of Barbados on October 6, 1976, which killed 73 innocent people, those responsible for this horrific terrorist act remain unpunished, despite the overwhelming evidence filed to incriminate its material and intellectual authors and their accomplices, and presented to the United States intelligence services.

The Cuban people, revolutionary government, and in particular the families of victims of the Barbados crime have not rested, in all these years, in their struggle for justice. Their pain was transformed into the strength and courage to establish the truth regarding the case, in all settings, not only on the island but across many countries of the world. This long-awaited justice, however, has not materialized.

Cuba remembers victims of terrorism

Families of victims of terrorism, students, athletes and the Cuban people paid tribute to the 73 victims of the mid-flight bombing of a Cubana de Aviación plane over Barbados on October 6, 1976 | Jose M. Correa.

“Today, 38 years after the Barbados crime, we are still hurting; but not because the murderers walked free on the streets or because some have died without paying for their crime: Barbados hurts for the children who waited in vain for their parents to arrive,” Ana Laura Calle Pérez, granddaughter of Wilfredo Pérez, pilot of the sabotaged plane, stated during the commemorative ceremony which took place October 6, after the procession to the Revolutionary Armed Forces Mausoleum, in Colón Cemetery.

Cuba mourns anniversary of terrorist bombing of Cubana Flight 455

“The reality that the U.S. government failed to charge Posada with terrorism — in connection with either the Cubana bombing, or the 1997 Havana hotel bombings — is a travesty of justice,” said Canadian author Stephen Kimber.

Cuba protests the release of Posada Carriles in the United States, 2007 | Photo: EFE

TeleSUR (Oct. 6) – Twenty-five years before September 11 there was October 6.

In 1976, on October 6, anti-Castro terrorists planted and ignited two bombs on a Cuban passenger plane killing all 73 passengers and five crew members on board after it crashed off of the coast of Barbados. It was Cubana de Aviacion, flight 455.

Stephen Kimber, author of “What Lies Across the Water: The Real Story of the Cuban Five,” told teleSUR English it was “the most deadly act of air terrorism in the Americas prior to 9/11.”

Reporters Without Borders unmasked: Its well-financed private arrangement with Otto Reich to destroy Cuba’s economy

By DIANA BARAHONA*, Council on Hemispheric Affairs

• Robert Ménard, founder of Reporters Without Borders (RSF), is out to bring down Castro rather than protect journalists.
• Tens of thousands of U.S. taxpayer dollars go to finance an organization that critically misuses its calculated similarity to the name of a highly regarded group, Doctors without Borders (MSF).
• Rather than a bona fide NGO, RSF is an extremist anti-Castro shock brigade.
• Ménard is a propagandist extraordinaire and committed zealot on taxpayer funds.
• Saatchi and Saatchi teams up with Bacardi in an attempt to trash the Cuba tourist industry.
• Vivendi Universal provides hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of in-kind resources to Ménard.
• Concern about journalists is an afterthought.

Freedom of the press, US style: Who killed Gary Webb?

The journalist who exposed the crimes of Luis Posada Carriles | JEAN-GUY ALLARD*

HAVANA (January 5) – Like few journalists before him, Gary Webb exposed the CIA’s evil schemes in the drug world and revealed to the US public how the country’s African-American neighbourhoods were inundated with crack as part of drug trafficking designed to supply the Nicaraguan Contras with money and weapons.