So these are plane crashes from around the world, but it's only for the countries that had a true crime case, if you don't see a plane crash in here, check my True crime from around the world book.
Warning, this book contains plane crashes and video...
This plane bombing takes us to the Caribbean nation of Barbados, which is located in the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.
WARNINGS OF A PLANE BOMBING AND PLANE CRASH
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Pictured above are people salvaging the wreckage of the plane.
Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 was a Cuban flight from Barbados to Jamaica that was brought down on the 6th of 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 the 27th of 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 the 19h of April 2007.
On the 11th of 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 the 5th of 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.
