Published at: 08/10/2025 09:00 PM

(VEA, October 7, 2016 and El Mundo, October 7, 1976)

• On October 6, 1976, a terrorist group, under the direction of Luis Posada Carriles, caused the explosion of a Cubana de Aviación plane with 73 passengers on board, including women, children and the entire Cuban national fencing team.
• On the wrecked Cubana flight 455, two bombs were implanted by two Venezuelan agents in the service of Luis Posada Carriles: Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo.
• The first bomb exploded 11 minutes before takeoff from Seawell Airport in Barbados. The second exploded 2 miles off the coast, when the pilots were trying to make a forced landing on their way back to the airport.
• Among the victims were 11 Guyanese high school graduates who were preparing to study medicine in Havana, a 9-year-old girl, the young wife of the Guyanese Ambassador to Cuba, 6 North Korean government officials and 48 passengers of Cuban nationality, including cabin crew and the Cuban National Youth Fencing Team.
• The terrorist group at the service of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been organized by Orlando Bosch during a meeting in the Dominican Republic in June 1976. Those present founded the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations (CORU). An international terrorist group, which was responsible for numerous crimes, acts of sabotage and placement of explosive devices in Havana, New York, Venezuela, Panama, Mexico and Jamaica.
• Among its members were members of the fascist Cuban Nationalist Movement (MNC) group, who worked for the Chilean National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) in the assassination of the former southern ambassador in Washington, Orlando Letelier del Solar, on September 21, 1976.
• In Venezuela, Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch enjoyed the protection and hospitality of President Carlos Andrés Pérez.
• Luis Posada Carriles held the position of Chief Commissioner of Pérez's political police, where he was known as “Commissioner Basilio”. There he left an extensive record of tortured and murdered victims.
• Orlando Bosch Avila entered Venezuela with a false passport, for which the Venezuelan Ambassador in Managua granted him a special visa. On Pérez's instructions, he was granted credentials as an official of the General Sectorial Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention (DISIP).
• Declassified documents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the CIA show that both agencies knew that Bosch and Posada Carriles were going to place explosives on the Cubana de Aviación plane.
• These same declassified files have revealed a memorandum addressed to Henry Kissinger, regarding the connection between the FBI and the CIA and these two agents of international organized crime.
• Posada Carriles publicly acknowledged his participation in this mass murder, during an interview with journalist Ann Louise Bardach published in The New York Times.
• In connection with the blowing up of the Cuban plane, both were convicted by a U.S. court of “a crime of moral turpitude, rather than a simple political crime.”
• What followed next? These two assassins were pardoned by President George H. W. Bush, contrary to the opinion of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General's ruling. The then President Bush was the Director of the CIA, that fateful October 6, 1976.
• Bush (father) was extremely magnanimous with these sinister characters, especially with Orlando Bosch, known as “the doctor of death”, who was wanted in the United States because he was the most dangerous terrorist on the continent.
• Luis Posada Carriles was allowed to enter the United States illegally and even hold press conferences to justify his extensive criminal record.
• Years later, in 1987, the information was declassified that, thanks to Oliver North, with dirty money from covert operations to purchase weapons with drug trafficking funds, the murderers Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch financed the escape.

Mazo News Team