PUERTO PADRE, Cuba.- “The United States courts “Can they judge people involved in the downing of the Brothers to the Rescue planes…?” is a question I was asked this week. And, yes, for the reasons we will now see, both federal and state authorities have jurisdiction and can hear and judge these events, for which there are already convictions that constitute legal precedents.
In the case of Florida, a state where conspiracies that resulted in murders occurred in conjunction with these events, there is an anti-terrorist law that the authorities can resort to in due process, when they deem it appropriate.
The murder of the pilots of Siblings The murders of 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, three of them American citizens and one with resident status in the United States – although the crimes did not occur in American territory but in international waters and at the hands of Cuban military pilots, the brothers Lorenzo and Francisco Pérez Pérez – are a crime that has its origins in espionage, which although it was a conspiracy designed and directed from Havana, Cuba, it took place on American soil, mainly in Miami and other cities in Florida.
The case
The same is true of the attempted murders of citizens José Basulto, Arnaldo Iglesias, and Silvia and Andrés Iriondo. Yes, their pursuit occurred on the high seas by the Cuban military pilot – now on parole in the United States – Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, But that surveillance began in Miami, by Cuban intelligence agents.
The Castro high command based its plan on its information and assessments, which, instead of occurring in compliance with established international protocols, involving an unarmed civilian plane, which they planned to issue an initial alert, proceeding to intercept and escort it if it was disobeyed, happened differently – we already saw what happened with two planes, although not with Basulto’s.
If the demolition of that building had taken place small plane If González-Pardo Rodríguez had followed the plane, the crew would have been killed, as in the case of the two Cessnas destroyed by the Pérez Pérez brothers. But both the pursuit and the murders – we must never lose sight of this – were the result of the Wasp Network’s espionage on the Brothers to the Rescue in Miami.
Only with information from its penetration agents located in Miami, as well as from high-profile agents placed in Washington, with the capacity to influence and inform the decisions taken, or that the Clinton administration would probably take in a similar situation, was it that while chasing a Cessna plane of Brothers to the Rescue – after two others had been shot down –, after three-thirty in the afternoon of Saturday, February 24, 1996, a MiG 29 plane, leaving behind Cuban jurisdictional waters, crossed over the international zone called by the American military, “trigger line”, placing itself about three minutes from the United States.
From the other side…
Ready to take off with full operational capacity, at the head of the runway at Homestead, Florida, there was a squadron of F-15 and F-16 fighters that, at no time and for “higher orders”, According to officials, the attack was intended to take off and take action, and that even if it were not an attack, it would have been preventive, as it would have had a deterrent effect on the MiGs. But that was the decision of the Clinton administration.
There is, officially recorded by the United States Government, a very profuse, detailed and enlightening information, both oral and graphic, which shows how from the very moment they took off from their base in San Antonio de los Baños, the American radars, even from California – Major Jeffrey Houlihan, head of the radars at the Riverside air base, has declared in this regard – detected and kept under observation the MiGs that went against the Cessnas of Brothers to the Rescue.
Although later pardoned by President Obama, the head of the Wasp Network was sentenced by a US court and, among other charges, was punished for the deaths of the Brothers to the Rescue.
And now, one of the fighter pilots, Mr. Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez, who was part of the MiG squadron that on that occasion had the very sad mission of shooting down defenseless planes, lives in the United States, a country whose courts have jurisdiction to judge him for what he did or failed to do on that Saturday, February 24, 1996.
And it would be good, for the sake of justice and perhaps even for himself, to see González-Pardo Rodríguez in court.
