PUERTO PADRE, Cuba.- Any citizen with a sense of justice and with a value for equity should feel disappointed, anywhere in the world where the news arrived: A former combat pilot of the Cuban Air Force, who participated in the persecution for political reasons and out of conscience of the Cuban regime, Brothers to the RescueToday, he lives and works in the United States, thanks to humanitarian parole.
This is about the lieutenant Retired colonel, later colonel of the reserve of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), former director of civil aviation and militant of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC), Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez, who as a direct author and not an accomplice, participated in the operation designed by the high command of the FAR with the consent of the PCC, to kill the Brothers to the Rescue.
And I say that González-Pardo Rodríguez is the direct author and not an accomplice of the murder of the Brothers to the Rescue, although he himself did not shoot at them, because according to the rules provided for crimes against humanity or human dignity or public health, or those provided for in international treaties, all those criminally responsible are authors, regardless of their form of participation.
Gonzalez-Pardo, pilot
And the flight of Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez flying a fighter plane at that time and place, concurs, yes – as any criminologist knows – with the crime of persecution and murder for political reasons, in ideal concurrence, since his presence at the scene of the crime was part of the various criminal violations that arose from that same act of conspiracy to commit intimidation and murder, as in fact occurred.
And, on that occasion, when two small planes were shot down in international waters and their four crew members killed, and a third aircraft with its pilots and passengers was pursued and endangered, Mr. González-Pardo Rodríguez was pilot of one of the pursuing MiGs.
The crime committed by Brothers to the Rescue remains unpunished. It is well-known. Public and notorious. And today, 28 years after this international crime was committed, with premeditation, treachery and cruelty, it hurts more than that tragic day, because of the shameful impunity and the blatant connivance. Yes, the complicity.
Following orders
After three o’clock in the afternoon on February 24, 1996, following orders from the leaders of the totalitarian regime, the brothers Fidel and Raúl Castro, crews of pilots of MiG aircraftwith academic training and combat experience, among whom was the now beneficiary of humanitarian parole, Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez, without the exemptions of criminal responsibility for due obedience, for being direct executors, fired air-to-air missiles at two harmless Cessna planes, pulverizing them.
They murdered and its four crew members, the civilian pilots Armando Alejandre Jr., 45 years old; Carlos Alberto Costa, 29 years old; Mario Manuel de la Peña, 24 years old and Pablo Morales, 29 years old, all of them American citizens or with resident status in the United States, members of the organization Brothers to the Rescue, dedicated to rescuing Cuban migrants at sea.
A third small plane Also a Cessna, in which José Basulto, Arnaldo Iglesias and Silvia and Andrés Iriondo were travelling, after their companions were shot down in international waters and according to civil aviation reports, they were also pursued by a third MiG aircraft of the Castro-communist Air Force, allegedly under the command of González-Pardo Rodríguez, all of these events on the afternoon of February 24, 1996, constituting an international crime against humanity.
A crime
The crime against humanity in this case is conceptualized as persecution and murder for political reasons, which makes it an imprescriptible crime, in which the direct authors and not mere accomplices are Fidel and Raúl Castro, the spies of the so-called “Wasp Network” infiltrated in the Brothers to the Rescue organization, the MiG pilots who fired, those who without firing carried out the pursuit, the chiefs and officers who made up the operational management at the air base, and the logistics personnel who supplied, armed and provided technical support for the fighters, with full knowledge that they participated in a criminal offense by attempting against the lives of defenseless civilians.
There is no room, therefore, for justifications by participants in this crime, or by mere opinion-givers, claiming that these military pilots murdered four unarmed civilians “in the performance of a duty”, or in the “exercise of a right”, or of a “profession, position or occupation”, or, more simply, by virtue of “due obedience”, “following orders”, because if it were that prosaic, only the leaders of these tyrannical regimes would be imprisoned for human rights violations and crimes against humanity, and not each and every one of their officers, soldiers, police officers, agents or informants who murdered, tortured, kidnapped or because of whose denunciations people lost their lives, their freedom or suffered physical, psychological or economic damage.
It is therefore embarrassing that while in Cuba hundreds of women and men suffer political imprisonment because of the totalitarian dictatorship, supported precisely by the military and police force, in the United States, a person with the precedents of Mr. Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez, benefits from humanitarian parole.
From Cuba to Miami
But it is not strange, you will remember when in Cuba and the PCC: hypocrisy translated as a crime, We said: “After these `revolutionaries´ or economic communists have cursed, vilified and spat on `Yankee imperialism´, they now flee to Miami, or, if they are deeply marked by their past, they look for any city in the United States to escape to.”
Well, in that case there is also the fighter-bomber pilot “Pardo”, who is said to be called “Bemba”, who went out to hunt down the unarmed planes of the Brothers to the Rescue. He says that he did not kill, it does not matter: He flew to kill himself even if it was others who killed. And that is a crime.
