The Cuban sports movement paid homage on Thursday to the victims of the Barbados crime at the pantheon of the Revolutionary Armed Forces located at Havana’s Colon cemetery, on the occasion of the 34th anniversary of this terrorist act.

General Delsa Esther Puebla (Tete) headed the pilgrimage and the ceremony in remembrance of the passengers of the Cubana airliner who died in 1976 as a result of a terrorist act, when the aircraft exploded in mid air off the coasts of Barbados.

All 73 people on board died due to this act of sabotage -57 of them Cubans-, among them the members of the Cuban youth fencing team, which had just won the Central American Championship in Venezuela.

Present in the ceremony were the President of the Cuban Sports Institute, Cristian Jimenez; sports figures Teofilo Stevenson, Javier Sotomayor and Ana Fidelia Quirot, athletes, relatives of the victims, and workers of Cubana Airlines. Flowers and a guard of honor were also part of the tribute.

The occasion was opportune for Carlos Manuel Permuy, the son of late Manuel Permuy, head of the Cuban sports delegation to the South American competition, to read the letter sent to President Barack Obama by the Committee of Relatives of the Victims of the Barbados Crime.

The letter demands the US head of state to indict Luis Posada Carriles for terrorism –the mastermind behind the Barbados crime-, who currently lives in the United States, as well as the immediate release of the five Cuban anti-terrorists incarcerated in the United Sates for 12 years now.

In addition, the text recalls the recent evidence contributed by Salvadoran Francisco Chavez Abarca, who admitted that Posada Carriles was the mastermind behind the terrorists acts carried out in Havana in 1997, resulting in the death of Italian Fabio Di Celmo.

In his statements to Prensa Latina news agency, former Cuban boxer Angel Herrera highlighted the reasons his compatriots have to demand justice, and recalled the young fencers assassinated in the terrorist act, some of which participated with him in the 1975 Pan-American Games in Mexico.

The Cuban people will not rest until Posada Carriles and the rest of the culprits of the Barbados sabotage are tried,” asserted the Olympic champion in Montreal, 1976, and Moscow, 1980.

Translated by Silke Páez

!joomlacomment 4.0 Copyright (C) 2009 Compojoom.com . All rights reserved."