Hostage killed in attempted Cuban plane hijacking (Roundup)

May 3, 2007, 23:31 GMT

Havana - Two Cuban military conscripts who fled from their unit attempted to hijack a plane in Havana on Thursday, reportedly in the hopes of reaching the United States, killing one hostage before they were arrested by authorities, Cuba's interior ministry said.

The armed conscripts, who were apparently trying to flee communist Cuba and ran away from their unit last weekend, commandeered a bus carrying passengers, rammed their way into the airport in Cuba's capital and boarded a plane early Thursday.

The hostage killed was himself a lieutenant colonel on the bus who, according to the authorities, tried to stop the two conscripts once inside the plane. Authorities intervened and captured the two before they could take off, according to the ministry.

The two conscripts are also accused of killing another soldier on April 29, when they fled their military unit in Managua, close to Havana.

A third deserter had already been captured before and it was him who 'revealed their intention of illegally abandoning the country,' the interior ministry said. All three conscripts are young men aged between 19 and 21 and original from Camagüey, in the centre of the island.

Cuba called it the latest in a 'long list of acts of terrorism' on the island and blamed the incident on a US law which allows Cubans that reach US soil to remain in the country.

It was the first hijack attempt on the island since April 2003 when a man armed with a hand grenade hijacked an internal flight and landed in Miami, where he was arrested and sentenced to a long prison term.

A month before, the three men that tried to hijack a boat with passengers had been condemned and executed in Cuba. This fact, alongside with the detention of 75 dissidents who were sentenced to long prison terms, sparked a strong diplomatic crisis with the European Union.