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Deserters arrested after foiled Havana hijacking attempt

A pair of heavily armed Cuban soldiers seized a city bus, killed an army officer and triggered a gun battle in a foiled bid to hijack a charter flight bound for the US.

The young army deserters were arrested before dawn on Thursday on the tarmac of a terminal that handles special charter flights between Havana and Miami, New York and other US cities.

The soldiers forced a city bus to head to Havana's Jose Marti International Airport at gunpoint and killed Army Lieutenant Colonel Victor Ibo Acuna Velazquez aboard a plane that had no passengers or crew -- apparently because there were no flights at the early hour. Both were apprehended.

An Interior Ministry statement suggested that Acuna Velazquez, who was unarmed, happened to be on the bus at the time it was commandeered and died "heroically" trying to thwart the hijacking. Other bus passengers were unharmed.

The government blamed anti-Cuba US policy for the incident.

"The responsibility for these new crimes lies with the highest-ranking authorities of the United States, adding to the long list of terrorist acts that Cuba has been the victim of for nearly half a century," it said.

Havana says that US immigration policies giving most Cubans almost guaranteed residency encourages them to risk their lives to get to the US, and says that US officials have long tolerated, even encouraged, violence against Cuba.

The incident comes amid an ongoing political campaign by Cuba's government accusing US authorities of protecting its archenemy Luis Posada Carriles, a 79-year-old Cuban militant who it accuses of an airliner bombing three decades ago and a string of Havana hotel bombings in the late 1990s.

Thursday's was the first Cuban hijacking attempt reported since the spring of 2003, when an architect seized an airliner carrying passengers on a domestic flight from the Isle of Youth and diverted it to the US by brandishing fake grenades. The hijacker was later sentenced to 20 years in prison in the US.
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