MIAMI, United States. — The Cuban regime criticized the decision of the US authorities to offer political asylum to the pilot Rubén Martínez Machado, who escaped from the island on October 21, 2022 aboard a Soviet-made Antonov AN-2 plane.
A official note of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Cuba (MINREX) talks about a summons to the Foreign Ministry made by the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, to the United States Chargé d’Affaires in Havana, Benjamin Ziff, with the supposed objective of transfer to the US official “Cuba’s energetic protest for the granting of political asylum” to the young man.
The MINREX statement indicates that this agency had requested the US “in four previous notes verbales the return of the author of this act of air piracy and of the aircraft, property of the National Air Services Company (ENSA).” These communications specified that “acts of air piracy constitute crimes typified in several international conventions ratified by Cuba and the United States.”
The Cuban Foreign Ministry had also insisted that the departure of the pilot from Cuba represented “a violation of airspace, operational safety and Cuban aeronautical regulations in accordance with the provisions of the Annexes of the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention ), and that impunity for actions of this nature constitute a negative and dangerous precedent.”
“Granting political asylum to those who hijacked an aircraft for the purpose of emigrating also constitutes a violation of what is stated in the Joint Declaration on immigration matters signed by both countries on January 12, 2017, which establishes the obligation of the parties to resolutely discourage illegal acts related to irregular migration, promote effective bilateral cooperation to prevent and prosecute human trafficking, as well as crimes associated with migratory movements, which endanger their national security, including the kidnapping of aircraft and vessels,'” the statement added.
The MINREX communication highlights that “the history of air piracy encouraged and tolerated by the United States for the purpose of destabilization and political hostility against Cuba has a well-known history and very negative and sensitive consequences, which should serve as a lesson for the government to American assumes responsible conduct in the face of such serious events.
“The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs deplores this decision by the United States government and its judicial system, which turns them, in practice, into accomplices and encouragers of piracy and aerial hijacking, crimes that, if tolerated and protected , could stimulate similar illegal acts with negative repercussions for the national security of both countries”, the statement concludes.
Rubén Martínez Machado received political asylum on February 23 and was released on Friday. That same day he offered a press conference where spoke for the first time to the media about his departure from Cuba.
“One is always afraid that they can send him back and they can shoot him,” he told the media, although he acknowledged that he always trusted that he would receive refuge in the United States.
“I always trusted that the US would welcome me,” said the young man, who attended the press conference in the company of Eduardo Soto, the lawyer who defended him in the case.
