Mystery of Flight 455: Forty years on questions remain about whether the CIA was behind the bombing of a Cuban passenger jet in which 73 people died
- On October 6, 1976 a Cuban jet - Flight 455 - was blown up by a bomb
- It had just taken off from Bridgetown in Barbados en route to Jamaica
- Before 9/11 it was worst act of air terrorism in the western hemisphere
- For years it has been assumed the CIA helped those who planted the bomb
- Cuba wants to extradite ex-CIA agent Luis Posada Carriles, 88, for his role
Forty years ago today a Douglas DC-8 aircraft trundled down the runway at Grantley Adams International Airport in Barbados and took off, climbing into a blue Caribbean sky.
As Flight 455 reached 18,000 feet, a bomb went off under an empty seat, the plane's ascent slowed and it began to bank dangerously.
Eight minutes later a second bomb went off in the toilet at the back of the plane and the plane plunged into the ocean.
Everyone on board perished.
This memorial overlooking the ocean in Barbados is a reminder of the tragedy 40 years ago. But who was behind the bomb remains a mystery
Among them were the 73 people on board were a girl aged nine and all 24 members of Cuba's national fencing team, who had won the world championships the previous year.
It was, at the time, the worst terrorist atrocity in the western hemisphere.
But 40 years later the full truth has yet to emerge about who was to blame for the disaster.
A diver lifts wreckage from Flight 455 onto a boat off the coast of Barbados in 1976
The plane was owned by Cubana de Aviación, the state-owned airline of Fidel Castro's Cuba, and suspicions immediately turned to his political opponents and their CIA backers.
Two Venezuelan nationals, Hernán Ricardo and Freddy Lugo were later convicted of their involvement in the bombing and jailed for 20 years.
They had boarded the plane in Caracas, Venezuela, and planted the time bombs before disembarking in Barbados.
Luis Posada Carriles is an old man now (right) but at the time of the bombing he was a young (left) who was prominent in the CIA-backed anti-Castro movement
Ricardo was paid $25,000 (£20,000) for his part in the atrocity and after his release from prison he reportedly moved to Florida and worked undercover for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
But the Venezuelans were only part of a wider plot.
Two Cuban exiles, who despised the Castro regime, are believed to have planned it.
Orlando Bosch died in 2011, aged 84, but Luis Posada Carriles, 88, is alive and well and living in the US.
Posada Carriles was a CIA agent who had taken part in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and retained close links with anti-Castro elements in Florida.
Cubans youth hold up dozens of photos of people who Havana claims are victims of US aggression, including the passengers on Cubana Flight 455, which was blown up in 1976
He was jailed in Venezuela for his role in the bombing of Flight 455 but escaped from jail in 1985 and was later jailed in Panama for plotting the assassination of Fidel Castro.
Relations between the US and Cuba, which were frozen solid during the Cold War and for decades afterwards, have started thawing after President Barack Obama's historic announcement in December 2014.
Obama visited Havana earlier this year - the first by a US President in more than half a century- and last week he appointed Jeffrey DeLaurentis to be the first US ambassador to Cuba in 55 years.
But Flight 455 is one of a number of obstacles in the way of better relations.
The Cubans are demanding to know whether the CIA was involved and protesters often march through Havana with photographs of the dead.
The plane was returning to Cuba, via Barbados and Jamaica, after the Pan American Games in Caracas, where the Cuban fencing team had just won gold medals.
Also on board were five North Koreans and 11 people from Guyana, including a girl aged nine.
Cuban President Raul Castro raises President Obama's hand during his visit to the island earlier this year. Donald Trump wants to kill Obama's Cuba initiative stone dead and go back to the years when the two countries were virtually at war
The airport serving the Barbadian capital, Bridgetown, had only recently been renamed after former prime minister Grantley Adams and was still known as Seawell to most pilots.
Air controllers said the pilot, Wilfredo Pérez, reported an emergency on board soon after take off: 'Seawell, Seawell! CU-455, Seawell...we have an explosion on board...we have a fire on board.'
Dalton Guiller watched the disaster from his boat off the coast of Barbados and told Venezuelan attorney Jose Pertierra: 'It didn't look right. It was too low.
'I then saw the plane rise slightly, bank to the right and crash into the water: nose and wing first.'
He said he steered his boat to the site where he saw the plane came down and he said: 'I saw suitcases, seats, and personal effects. I saw bodies, only one or two of them intact. The others were not full bodies.'
A Cuban diver goes into the waters off Barbados searching for wreckage from the plane in October 1976
The United States has never admitted any involvement in the fate of Flight 455, let alone apologised for it.
Mr Posada Carriles - who is also wanted by Venezuela in connection with the bombing of Flight 455 - went on trial in Texas in 2011 but, after a trial lasting 13 weeks, the jury acquitted him on 11 counts of perjury and immigration fraud.
He had been accused of lying to immigration officials about how he got into the US and about his involvement in bomb attacks in Havana in 1997 in which an Italian tourist was killed.
His lawyer told a federal court judge his client admitted taking part in death squads in El Salvador and blowing up a university in Panama but said all his actions in Latin America were 'in the name of Washington'.
The State Department and the CIA have been contacted by Mail Online but have not responded to requests for interviews.
The Cuban Foreign Ministry has also not commented.
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