From: nicanet@nyxfer.UUCP
Newsgroups: soc.culture.caribbean
Subject: Cuba News Update 1/3/93
Date: 4 Jan 93 22:19:00 GMT
Nf-ID: #N:L1aVwB14w165w@nyxfer.uucp:1547094128:000:3936
Nf-From: nyxfer.uucp!nicanet    Jan  4 14:19:00 1993


Subject: Cuba News Update 1/3/93
From: nyxfer!nicanet (NicaNet NY)


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

excerpted from...

         Nicaragua Solidarity Network of Greater New York
       339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 (212) 674-9499

             Weekly News Update #153, January 3, 1993


CUBAN PILOT HIJACKS PLANE

US officials have so far declined to comment on whether a Cuban
pilot's diversion of a Cuban airliner to Miami on Dec. 29 will be
considered a hijacking under international or domestic law. The
Aero Caribbean plane was on a flight from Havana to Cuba's
Varadero Beach resort when the pilot and passengers drugged and
bound a security guard and forcibly subdued the co-pilot; 48
people--everyone on board except the guard, the co-pilot, his
wife and daughter and a flight attendant--asked for political
asylum in the US and have been released from immigration
detention centers. The five who wished to return have done so,
and the plane has also been returned to Cuba. [WP 12/30/92; NYT
1/1/93 from AP; IPS 12/29/92] 
 
Under the 1973 bilateral US-Cuba anti-hijacking agreement which
was designed to stem hijackings of US aircraft to Cuba in the
mid-1960s, the latest incident would be considered a hijacking
and the pilot should be charged. But an official in the State
Department's legal department told Inter Press Service on Dec. 29
that Washington considers the agreement was terminated in 1977,
six months after Cuban President Fidel Castro, angered by the
mid-air bombing of a Cuban airliner over Barbados, announced he
would not renew it. And Wayne Smith, former head of the US
Interests Section in Havana, said the US "has never honored the
1973 agreement for all practical purposes." He added, "We have
never prosecuted anyone for hijacking a plane and coming to the
US from Cuba. I wouldn't think we will prosecute. We should. Even
if you don't get a conviction, you should uphold the law." The US
did in fact prosecute one maritime hijacking in 1980, but the
judge threw the case out on the grounds that the hijackers were
escaping communism. Under a 1970 international treaty, the US is
obligated to "either return or try" hijackers. Though Cuba is not
a signatory to the 1970 convention, it did return several
hijackers who sought asylum there in the 1970s. [IPS 12/29/92]
 

FIDEL CASTRO HONORED BY MEXICAN BASEBALL HALL OF FAME

Rafael Dominguez, director general of Mexico's Baseball Hall of
Fame, located in Monterrey, announced on Nov. 29 that Cuban
President Fidel Castro would be invited as a guest of honor to
the Hall's twentieth anniversary celebration. The anniversary is
in March but the celebration is scheduled for June 19 or 21,
1993. Dominguez explained that Castro was invited because he was
a great baseball fan and had been a pitcher. At the same time, he
explained, "this is a strategic moment, when Monterrey and Cuba
are joining together in other areas, for example, two industries
from here are going to install plants in Cuba." The Mexican
Baseball Hall of Fame is second only to the one in Cooperstown,
New York. [ED-LP 11/30/92] 

                               -30-

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