Cuban rightist: US could have saved plane
Jose Basulto, leader of the right-wing Miami-based organisation "Brothers to the Rescue", gave a press conference at the US House of Representatives on July 31 and handed over documents suggesting that US aviation authorities could have averted the February 24 shooting down by the Cuban government of two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft.
The documents contain testimony that witnesses from the Federal Aviation Administration gave to the Miami court hearing Basulto's appeal of a 150-day suspension of his pilot's licence for his role in the incident; Basulto was piloting a third plane on February 24 in an unauthorised flight into Cuban air space.
Jeffrey Houlihan, a US Customs radar operator, testified that at 3:15pm on February 24 he observed on his radar screen that two Cuban MiG fighter jets were flying toward the US and manoeuvring between the Brothers to the Rescue planes. The officer made what he described as a "911 call" to Florida's Tyndall Air Force Base. The response was: "We're handling it, don't worry".
The MiGs shot down the first Brothers to the Rescue plane at 3:21 and the second at 3:28. Basulto says the US chose not to warn his group about the MiGs. "I never expected US planes to come and save us, but at least I expected the decency of a call", Basulto told the Washington Post. Basulto says that on other occasions the US had alerted Brothers to the Rescue pilots when MiGs were approaching and had even scrambled fighters to scare the Cubans off.
[From Weekly News Update on the Americas, 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY, 10012, USA; email nicanet@blythe.org.]