On 24 February 1996 a Cuban Air ForceMikoyan MiG-29UB shot down two unarmed Cessna 337 Skymaster aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, an organization opposed to the Cuban government. The Organisation of American States (OAS) reported that no warning was given; Cuban government sources said "These people knew what they were doing. They were warned", and that the aircraft had entered Cuban airspace. All the occupants of the aircraft were killed: Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales. A third Cessna involved escaped. Previous similar flights had released propaganda leaflets over Cuba.
Map showing the southernmost positions (prior to the incident) of the three aircraft according to US and Cuban data.
Radar data and screen prints were provided by a United States Customs Service Supervisory Detection Systems Specialist who recorded the entire incident as it happened using data from a U.S. surveillance radar balloon in the Florida Keys.
The map shows the locations where the two aircraft were reportedly shot down. Finding many inconsistencies in US and Cuban data, the ICAO investigation determined the most likely location to be that determined from information from the ship Majesty of the Seas.
Description
On 24 February 1996, two of the Brothers to the Rescue Cessna 337 Skymasters (twin-engine civilian light aircraft) were shot down by a Cuban Air ForceMikoyan MiG-29UB, while a second jet fighter, a MiG-23, orbited nearby. All the occupants of the aircraft were killed: Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Jr., Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales. A third aircraft, flown by José Basulto, escaped.[1] The first aircraft was shot down 9 nautical miles (17km; 10mi) outside Cuban territorial airspace, and the second was shot down 10 nautical miles (19km; 12mi) outside.[1]
A military version of the Cessna 337, the Cessna O-2 Skymaster, had been retired in the late 1980s from military service, although two examples were kept mainly in storage by the US Army at the Yuma Testing Ground until 2010. Cuba claimed that the group used "planes previously employed in the wars in Vietnam and El Salvador given to them by the U.S. Air Force from which the "USAF" signs have not been completely erased."[2]
The incident was investigated by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Their report concluded that the authorities in Cuba had notified the authorities in the United States of multiple violations of their airspace since May 1994.[3] In at least one case (13 July 1995), the pilot had released leaflets over Havana. The United States authorities had issued public statements advising of the potential consequences of unauthorized entry into Cuban airspace and had initiated legal actions against Basulto, but had retained his certification to fly during appeal. After Basulto was warned by an FAA official about the possibility of being shot down, he replied, "You must understand I have a mission in life to perform", disregarding the potential danger involved.[4] He later said he considered the group's activities to be acts of civil disobedience against the regime, and a demonstration that such disobedience was possible.[4]
According to Cuban authorities, two light aircraft entered Cuban territorial airspace on 9 and 13 January 1996, and released leaflets which fell on Cuban territory. According to the pilot of one of the aircraft, half a million leaflets were released on 13 January; he also claims they were released outside the 12 miles (19km) Cuban territorial limit and the wind carried them to Havana. This version of events was detailed by Juan Pablo Roque, the man who had returned to Cuba the day before the shootdown and who was later implicated as having helped organize the shootdown as a Cuban spy placed with the group. According to Roque, Basulto had dropped the leaflets from 10 miles (16km) north of Havana, not the stated 12 miles (19km), from a high altitude on a day when the winds would carry them south toward Cuba. Specifically, in a Cuban television interview days after the shootdown took place, Roque, from within Cuba, stated, "I personally have violated air space, specifically the last was on 9 January 1996, where I got a call the day before to participate in a flight to Havana where thousands of leaflets were going to be released from a height of more than 9,500 feet (2,900m) at a distance of less than 10 miles (16km) from the coast."
Following that incident, the ICAO report states, the Commander of the Anti-Aircraft Defence of the Air Force of Cuba was instructed to intercept any further flights and was authorized to shoot them down, whether or not they had entered Cuban airspace.
On 24 February 1996, the group's aircraft flew another mission. While the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft were still north of the 24th parallel, the Cuban Air Force ordered the scrambling of two military aircraft, a MiG-29 and a MiG-23, operating under ground control.[2]
The pilots identified the target as a Cessna 337 and requested authorization from military control, who responded with "authorized to destroy." Two of the group's three aircraft flying that day were shot down. According to the OAS report, there was no warning of any kind issued to the planes, nor the opportunity given to land. With the shooting down of each aircraft, the Cuban pilots could be heard celebrating over the radio. Terms like "cojones" were repeatedly used by the Cuban fighter pilots. Their radio transmissions included statements such as "We blew his balls off!" In a reference to the Cuban pilot's understanding that the aircraft they were attacking were the same ones that had been repeatedly and continuously flying directly over the island of Cuba beside all the buildings and over the streets, they also transmitted the following, "He won't give us any more fucking trouble." Finally, the Cuban pilots also said, "The other one is destroyed; the other one is destroyed. Homeland or death (patria o muerte), you bastards! The other one is also down." Military control stated "Congratulations to the pair of you."[5]
Subsequently, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights issued a report that concluded, "The fact that weapons of war and combat-trained pilots were used against unarmed civilians shows not only how disproportionate the use of force was, but also the intent to end the lives of those individuals. It is claimed the extracts from the radio communications between the MiG-29 pilots and the military control tower indicate that they acted from a superior position and showed malice and scorn toward the human dignity of the victims."[6]
The third Brothers to the Rescue aircraft, with Basulto on board, was also identified for intercept and was to be shot down, but escaped.
José Basulto, aviator and leader of "Brothers to the Rescue" in Miami in 2010
Testimony from a USAF Colonel Buchner expressed support for Cuba's claim that both Brothers' aircraft and a third flown by Basulto were only 4 miles (6.4km) to 5 miles (8.0km) off the Cuban coast.[7] The statement by Buchner is directly contradictory to eyewitness testimony and verified radar data documentation provided by Department of the Treasury, Supervisory Detection Systems Specialist J. Houlihan during sworn testimony before an FAA Administrative Hearing in 1996, and the House of Representatives, Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Committee on International Relations, Washington D.C. September 18, 1996.[8]
The ICAO report found that the aircraft shot down were both very near (and, in one case, directly above) a U.S fishing vessel named Tri-Liner which had a recorded position at the time of the incident 9 nautical miles (17km; 10mi) outside Cuban territorial airspace.[9] Also nearby was the cruise ship Majesty of the Seas.[9]
The ICAO report also states that means other than interception, such as radio communication, had been available to Cuba, but had not been utilized, and that this conflicts with the ICAO principle that interception of civil aircraft should be undertaken only as a last resort.[10] It is also claimed the Cuban Air Force did not make any attempt to direct the aircraft beyond the boundaries of national airspace, guide them away from a prohibited, restricted or danger area or instruct them to effect a landing.[11]
Reactions to the incident
International
Following the incident, the United Nations Security Council passed Security Council Resolution 1067 (1996), a U.S.-sponsored resolution condemning Cuba.[12] Dissenting members believed that the resolution was singling out Cuba for condemnation, and instead should have issued a call which urged both states to refrain from shooting down civilian airplanes as well as to prevent the improper use of civil aviation.[13]
United States
In Miami, reaction from the exile community was swift. Jorge Mas Canosa, co-founder and leader of the Cuban American National Foundation, condemned the attack: "For two warplanes from the Castro government to shoot down two unarmed civilian aircraft with American flags on a humanitarian mission should be considered an act of war against the US".[14] President Bill Clinton issued Proclamation 6867 on March 1, 1996, declaring a national emergency by reason of a disturbance or threatened disturbance of international relations.[15]
After the attack, the pilots responsible were the twin brothers, Teniente Coronel (LTC) Lorenzo Alberto Perez Perez and his "Guy in Back," Teniente Coronel (LTC) Francisco Perez Perez. Both were charged in the United States for their role in the attack.[1]
Cuban response
Miguel Alfonso Martinez of the Cuban Foreign Ministry said that the two aircraft that were shot down were "not common civilian aircraft" as suggested by the US. "This is not the case of an innocent civilian airliner that, because of an instrument error, departs from an air corridor and gets into the airspace of another country". "These people knew what they were doing. They were warned. They wanted to take certain actions that were clearly intended to destabilize the Cuban government and the US authorities knew about their intentions".[14]
Groups sympathetic to Cuba, while not approving the shootdown, noted "the policies of the United States government of indefensible hostility against the island of Cuba that sit at the heart of the matter", citing constant threats and a history of military and paramilitary attacks on Cuba from the US and paramilitary groups.[16]
Documentary film Shoot Down, that illustrates the incident from the Brothers to the Rescue perspective, was released in 2006 and rereleased in an updated, edited version on January 25, 2008. It was directed by Cristina Khuly, niece of downed pilot Armando Alejandre, Jr.[17]
Book: The Last Soldiers on the Cold War by Fernando Morais, 2011.
Book: BETRAYAL: Cuba, Castro & The Cuban Five Thomas Van Hare and Matt Lawrence, 2010.
Related Research Articles
The Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces are the military forces of Cuba. They include Revolutionary Army, Revolutionary Navy, Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force, and other paramilitary bodies including the Territorial Troops Militia, Youth Labor Army, and the Defense and Production Brigades, plus the Civil Defense Organization and the National Reserves Institution. All these groups are subordinated to the Ministry of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 (KE007/KAL007) was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from New York City to Seoul via Anchorage, Alaska. On September 1, 1983, the flight was shot down by a Soviet Sukhoi Su-15 interceptor aircraft. The Boeing 747 airliner was en route from Anchorage to Seoul, but owing to a navigational mistake made by the crew, the airliner drifted from its planned route and flew through Soviet prohibited airspace. The Soviet Air Forces treated the unidentified aircraft as an intruding U.S. spy plane, and destroyed it with air-to-air missiles, after firing warning shots. The Korean airliner eventually crashed into the sea near Moneron Island west of Sakhalin in the Sea of Japan, killing all 269 passengers and crew aboard, including Larry McDonald, a United States representative. The Soviet Union found the wreckage under the sea two weeks later on September 15 and found the flight recorders in October, but this information was kept secret by the Soviet authorities until 1992, after the country's dissolution.
Iran Air Flight 655 was a scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3July 1988 by two surface-to-air missiles fired by USS Vincennes, a United States Navy warship. The missiles hit the aircraft, an Airbus A300, while it was flying its usual route over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, shortly after the flight departed its stopover location, Bandar Abbas International Airport. All 290 people on board were killed. The shootdown occurred during the Iran–Iraq War, which had been continuing for nearly eight years. Vincennes had entered Iranian territorial waters after one of its helicopters drew warning fire from Iranian speedboats operating within Iranian territorial limits.
The Cessna Skymaster is an American twin-engine civil utility aircraft built in a push-pull configuration. Its engines are mounted in the nose and rear of its pod-style fuselage. Twin booms extend aft of the wings to the vertical stabilizers, with the rear engine between them. The horizontal stabilizer is aft of the pusher propeller, mounted between and connecting the two booms. The combined tractor and pusher engines produce centerline thrust and a unique sound. The Cessna O-2 Skymaster is a military version of the Cessna Model 337 Super Skymaster.
The VympelR-73 is a short-range air-to-air missile developed by Vympel NPO that entered service in 1984.
Brothers to the Rescue is a Miami-based activist nonprofit organization headed by José Basulto. Formed by Cuban exiles, the group is widely known for its opposition to the Cuban government and its former leader Fidel Castro. The group describes itself as a humanitarian organization aiming to assist and rescue raft refugees emigrating from Cuba and to "support the efforts of the Cuban people to free themselves from dictatorship through the use of active non-violence". Brothers to the Rescue, Inc., was founded in May 1991 "after several pilots were touched by the death of" fifteen-year-old Gregorio Perez Ricardo, who "fleeing Castro's Cuba on a raft, perished of severe dehydration in the hands of U.S. Coast Guard officers who were attempting to save his life."
Korean Air Lines Flight 902 was a scheduled Korean Air Lines flight from Paris to Seoul via Anchorage. On 20 April 1978, the Soviet air defense shot down the aircraft serving the flight, a Boeing 707, near Murmansk, Soviet Union, after the aircraft violated Soviet airspace.
Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114 was a regularly scheduled civilian flight from Tripoli to Cairo, through Benghazi, that was shot down in 1973 by Israeli fighter jets after it entered by mistake, due to a system malfunction, the airspace of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula – then under Israeli occupation – resulting in the death of 108 civilians.
José Jesús Basulto León is a former CIA-trained Cuban political dissident and the leader of the nonprofit Cuban exile organization Brothers to the Rescue.
El Al Flight 402 was an international passenger flight from London to Tel Aviv via Vienna and Istanbul. On 27 July 1955, the flight, operated by a Lockheed Constellation registered as 4X-AKC, strayed into then-Communist Bulgarian airspace and was attacked by two Bulgarian MiG-15 jet fighters, crashing near Petrich. All 7 crew and 51 passengers on board the airliner were killed. The crash took place amid highly strained relations between the Eastern Bloc and the Western Bloc and was the deadliest involving the Constellation up to that time.
The 2008 Georgian drone shootdowns refer to a series of military incidents involving Georgian unmanned aerial vehicles brought down over the breakaway republic of Abkhazia between March and May 2008. The skirmishes were part of a larger context of tensions between Georgia and Russia, eventually leading up to the Russo-Georgian War.
After World War II, there were many instances of air-to-air combat between the Soviet Union and the United States.
United Nations Security Council resolution 1067, adopted on 26 July 1996, after noting various statements and resolutions by the President of the Security Council and International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) deploring the shooting down of two civilian aircraft by the Cuban Air Force on 24 February 1996, the Council called on Cuba to comply with international obligations relating to aviation, particularly the Convention on International Civil Aviation.
Korean Air Lines Flight 007 alternative theories concerns the various theories put forward regarding the shooting down of Korean Air Lines Flight 007. The aircraft was en route from New York City via Anchorage to Seoul on September 1, 1983, when it strayed into prohibited Soviet airspace and was shot down by Soviet fighter jets.
On 22 June 2012, a Turkish McDonnell Douglas RF-4E Phantom II reconnaissance jet was intercepted and shot down by the Syrian Army in international airspace, after having violated Syrian airspace. The jet's pilots were killed; both Turkish and Syrian forces searched for them before recovering their bodies in early July. The incident was part of a series of incidents between Turkey and Syria since the beginning of the Syrian Civil War and greatly escalated the tensions between the two countries.
The 1958 C-130 shootdown incident was the shooting down of an American Lockheed C-130A-II-LM reconnaissance aircraft which entered Soviet airspace during a mission in the region of Armenian SSR.
The Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force commonly abbreviated to DAAFAR in both Spanish and English, is the air force of Cuba.
On 24 November 2015, a Turkish Air Force F-16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M attack aircraft near the Syria–Turkey border. According to Turkey, the aircraft was fired upon while in Turkish airspace because it violated the border up to a depth of 2.19 kilometres for about 17 seconds after being warned to change its heading ten times over a period of five minutes before entering the airspace. The Russia Defence Ministry denied that the aircraft ever left Syrian airspace, claiming that their satellite data showed that the Sukhoi was about 1,000 metres (1,100 yd) inside Syrian airspace when it was shot down.
1 2 Section III, Paragraph 7 of the REPORT Nº 86/99, CASE 11.589, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.106 Doc. 3 rev. at 586 (1999) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued September 29, 1999
↑ "Report on the shooting down of two U.S.-registered private civil aircraft by Cuban military aircraft on 24 February 1996", C-WP/10441, June 20, 1996, United Nations Security Council document, S/1996/509, July 1, 1996.
↑ Transcripts of Cuban Military Radio Communications, International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Report on the shooting down of two U.S.-registered private civil aircraft by Cuban military aircraft on 24 February 1996, C-WP/10441, June 20, 1996, pp. 35 ff., United Nations, Security Council, S/1996/509, July 1, 1996
↑ Section IV, Paragraph 37, Subsection iii of the REPORT Nº 86/99, CASE 11.589, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.106 Doc. 3 rev. at 586 (1999) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued September 29, 1999
↑ Court testimony of retired USAF Colonel Buchner, reported in The Miami Herald, March 22, 2001, "Fliers downed by MiGs violated Cuban airspace, colonel says".
↑ House of Representatives, Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, Committee on International Relations, Washington D.C. September 18, 1996
1 2 Sections 3.16 and 3.17 of the Resolution on the Cuban Government's Shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue Adopted by the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) at the Twentieth Meeting of its 148th Session on 27 June 1996
↑ Sections 3.18, 3.19 and 3.20 of the Resolution on the Cuban Government's Shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue Adopted by the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) at the Twentieth Meeting of its 148th Session on 27 June 1996
↑ Section III, Paragraph 8 of the REPORT Nº 86/99, CASE 11.589, OEA/Ser.L/V/II.106 Doc. 3 rev. at 586 (1999) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, issued September 29, 1999
↑ United Nations press release SC/6247: Security Council condemns use of weapons against civil aircraft; calls on Cuba to comply with international law. 27 July 1996
1 2 "U.S. TIGHTENS SANCTIONS AGAINST CUBA AFTER DOWNING OF TWO EXILE PLANES OFF CUBAN COAST". In NotiSur - Latin American Political Affairs ISSN 1060-4189, Volume 6, Number 9 March 1, 1996 "NotiSur - Latin American Political Affairs; March 1, 1996". Archived from the original on 15 September 2003. Retrieved 30 April 2006.
↑ Shoot Down, a 2006 film about the shootdown, co-produced by the niece of one of the four victims.Archived 2014-12-18 at the Wayback Machine
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
