Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 was an international Cuban flight from Barbados to Jamaica that was brought down on 6 October 1976 by a terrorist bomb attack. All 73 people on board the Douglas DC-8 aircraft were killed after two time bombs went off and the plane crashed into the sea. The crash killed every member of the Cuban national fencing team.
Several CIA-linked anti-Castro Cuban exiles, among them Rafael De Jesus Gutierrez, a Cuban intelligence officer of the Batista regime turned CIA spy after the Cuban revolution, were implicated by the evidence. Political complications quickly arose when Cuba accused the US government of being an accomplice to the attack. CIA documents released in 2005 do indicate that the agency "had concrete advance intelligence, as early as June 1976, on plans by Cuban exile terrorist groups to bomb a Cubana airliner." Former CIA operative and anti-Castro militant Luis Posada Carriles denied involvement but provides many details of the incident in his book Caminos del Guerrero (Ways of the Warrior). The Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, of which Carriles was a founder, is widely seen as responsible for the bombing.
Four men were arrested in connection with the bombing, and a trial was held in Venezuela. Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo Lozano were each sentenced to 20-year prison terms. Orlando Bosch was acquitted and later moved to Miami, Florida, where he lived until his death on 27 April 2011. Luis Posada Carriles was held for eight years while awaiting a final sentence but eventually fled. He later entered the United States, where he was held on charges of entering the country illegally, but was released on 19 April 2007.
On 11 June 1976, Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU) was founded in the Dominican Republic by Cuban exiles. CORU united five anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, including Alpha 66 and Omega 7. For three months prior to the bombing of Flight 455, CORU waged a campaign of violence against several Caribbean countries which had established links with Cuba.
In July 1976, the same flight was targeted in Jamaica by a suitcase bomb which exploded shortly before being loaded onto the plane. Other bombings in the summer included a number of offices of airlines carrying out business with Cuba, including the offices of the BWIA West Indies Airways in Barbados; of Air Panama in Colombia; and of Iberia and Nanaco Line in Costa Rica.
Other attacks included the murder of a Cuban official in Mexico and two more Cuban officials in Argentina; the September assassination of Orlando Letelier in Washington, D.C.; and "a mysterious fire in Guyana [which] destroyed a large quantity of Cuban-supplied fishing equipment."
On 5 October 1976, Lugo and Hernán Ricardo Lozano left Caracas for Trinidad, arriving at 1 a.m. The following day, they sought to board Cubana de Aviación flight number CU-455, which was scheduled to fly from Guyana to Havana, Cuba, via Trinidad, Barbados, and Kingston, after rejecting an offer of an earlier flight with British West Indies Airways (BWIA). With a member of the Cuban fencing team waiting for the Cubana flight assisting with interpretation, the pair were able to insist on boarding the later Cubana flight. The pair left the flight at Barbados, and later returned to Trinidad.
Eleven minutes after takeoff from Barbados' Seawell Airport (now Grantley Adams International Airport) and at an altitude of 18,000 feet (5,500 m), two bombs exploded on board. One was located in the aircraft's rear lavatory, and another in the midsection of the passenger cabin. The former ultimately destroyed the aircraft's control cables, while the latter blasted a hole in the aircraft and started a fire.
The plane went into a rapid descent, while the pilots tried unsuccessfully to return the plane to Seawell Airport. The captain, Wilfredo Pérez Pérez, radioed to the control tower: "We have an explosion aboard – we are descending immediately! ... We have fire on board! We are requesting immediate landing! We have a total emergency!" Realizing a successful landing was no longer possible, it appears that the pilot turned the craft away from the beach and towards the Caribbean Sea off Porters, St James, potentially saving the lives of many tourists. The crash occurred about 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) off the coast.
All 48 passengers and 25 crew aboard the plane died: the victims comprised 57 Cubans, eleven Guyanese, and five North Koreans. Among the dead were all 24 members of the 1975 national Cuban fencing team, which had just won every gold medal in the Central American and Caribbean Championships; many were teenagers. Several officials of the Cuban government were also aboard the plane: Manuel Permuy Hernández, director of the National Institute of Sports (INDER); Jorge de la Nuez Suárez, secretary for the shrimp fleet; Alfonso González, National Commissioner of Firearm Sports; and Domingo Chacón Coello, an agent from the Interior Ministry. The eleven Guyanese passengers included five travelling to Cuba to study medicine, and the young wife of a Guyanese diplomat. The five North Koreans were government officials and a cameraman.
Hours after the explosions, Trinidadian authorities arrested Freddy Lugo and Hernan Ricardo Lozano, two Venezuelan men who had boarded the plane in Trinidad and checked their baggage to Cuba, but who had exited the plane in Barbados and flown separately to Trinidad. Lozano had been traveling with a false identity under the name of José Vázquez García.
Lugo and Lozano confessed, and declared they were acting under the orders of Luis Posada Carriles, a CIA operative. Their testimony, along with other evidence, implicated Posada and fellow CIA operative Orlando Bosch, an anti-Castro Cuban living in Venezuela.
On 14 October 1976, Posada and Bosch were arrested in Caracas, Venezuela, and the offices of the Commercial and Industrial Investigations C.A. (Investigaciones Comerciales e Industriales, ICICA), a private investigator’s company owned by Posada, were raided. Weapons, explosives and a radio transmitter were found. Lozano was an employee of ICICA at the time of the attack, while Lugo worked as a photographer for the Ministry of Mines and Hydrocarbons.
On 20 October, authorities of Trinidad, Cuba, Barbados, Guyana and Venezuela held a meeting in Port of Spain, during which it was decided to hold the trial in Caracas, Venezuela, since the four accused were citizens of that country. Shortly after, Lugo and Lozano were deported to Venezuela.
On 25 August 1977, Judge Delia Estava Moreno referred the case to a military tribunal, charging all four co-conspirators with treason.
In September 1980, a Venezuelan military judge acquitted all four men.
The prosecutor appealed, arguing that a military court was the wrong forum to try the case for two reasons: none of the men were military personnel in 1976, and the crime of qualified homicide or aggravated homicide cannot be tried by a military tribunal. The Military Court of Appeals agreed and surrendered jurisdiction, rendering the acquittal moot. The Judge ruled that the accused "are civilians and the crimes imputed to them are governed by the penal (and not the military) code ... Civilians and common law crimes are not subject to the dispositions of the Code of Military Justice."
The four were then charged with aggravated homicide and treason before a civilian court.