Today at 11am at the Atrium of the Piarco International Airport a plaque will be unveiled to memorialise the bombing of Cubana flight 455. An exhibition explaining the circumstances surrounding the bombing will also be launched.

Minister of National Security Edmund Dillon and Minister of Foreign Affairs Dennis Moses will join  Cuban Ambassador Vazquez Moreno  and Venezuelan Ambassador Coromoto Godoy in welcoming a Cuban delegation to Trinidad and Tobago. The Cuban Delegation includes Fernando González – one of the five Cubans who was imprisoned in the United States, and who was released when the U-S and Cuba re-established diplomatic relations; Camilo Rojo – who is a relative of one of the Cubans killed in the Cubana bombing; and Tania Parra , an official of the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP).

Brief information about the Bombing of Cubana #455

On October 6, 1976 Cubana flight 455 was blown up off the coast of Barbados. All 73 persons on board died the flight were killed. They included 57 Cubans (of whom 24 were members of the Cuban national fencing team that had just won all the gold medals at the just completed CAC games); 11 were Guyanese (5 of whom were students on their way to Havana to study medicine, plus the wife of a Guyanese diplomat); 5 were North Koreans.

Two men – Freddy Lugo and Herman Ricardo Lozarno – arrived in Trinidad on October 5, then left on the Cubana flight for Barbados. They got off in Barbados and returned to Trinidad. However, the two bombs in their luggage remained on board the Cubana flight and blew up 10 minutes after take-off.

They were arrested in Trinidad, and confessed to the crime implicating two Cuban-Americans who were in Venezuela at the time. Those men, Luis Posada Carrlies and Orlando Bosch, were then arrested in Caracas on October 14.

Following a senior government meeting between officials from T&T, Barbados, Cuba, Guyana and Venezuela in Trinidad on October 20th, a decision was taken to try Lugo and Lozarno in Venezuela. They were then deported from Trinidad to Venezuela.