Commemoration for the 49th Anniversary of the Cubana Air Disaster

Education Minister, Sonia Parag, and Minister Within the Culture, Youth and Sport Ministry, Steven Jacobs attended the commemoration ceremony for the 49th Anniversary of the Cubana Air Disaster, which was held at Cubana Air Tragedy Monument Site in the University of Guyana’s (UG) Turkeyen Campus on Monday.
Eleven 11 Guyanese were among 73 passengers and crew members killed after two bombs exploded on a Cubana Airline flight off the coast of Barbados back in 1976.
On October 6, 1976, the Cubana Airline flight 455 left Guyana en route to Cuba with stops along the way in Trinidad, Barbados and Jamaica respectively.
However, shortly after leaving the Barbados airport, there was an explosion in the aircraft’s rear, and upon realising that they could not make it back to the airport for an emergency landing, the pilot, Captain Wilfredo Perez, steered the plane towards the Atlantic Ocean, avoiding the tourist-packed Paradise Beach. Another bomb went off in the aircraft before it crashed, killing all 73 passengers and crew members on board. The Guyanese killed included: Seshnarine Kumar, 18; Ann Nelson, 18; Eric Norton, 18; Rawle Thomas, 18; and Jacqueline Williams, 19, all students on their way to study medicine and engineering in Cuba. Others who perished were relatives Violet and Rita Thomas, nine-year-old Sabrina Harrypaul, Margaret Bradshaw, Raymond Persaud, and economist Gordon Sobha.
Among the other victims were five Koreans and 57 Cubans, including 24 members of the 1975 Cuban national fencing team, who were returning home after winning gold medals at the Central American and Caribbean Championship games.
Investigations had revealed that CIA-linked anti-Castro Cuban exiles conspired with members of the Venezuelan Secret Police to bomb the Cuban aircraft in protest of Castro’s dictatorial policies in Cuba. Four men who had joined the plane in Trinidad and disembarked the aircraft in Barbados were subsequently arrested and tried in Venezuela in connection with the bombing and murder of 73 persons.
Two of them were sentenced to 20 years in prison, another was acquitted and subsequently moved to the United States (US), while the other escaped from Venezuela and fled to the US.