15th Anniversary Of Brothers To The Rescue Tragedy
MIAMI (CBS4) - On this day fifteen years ago, a plume of smoke captured by a tourist's camera from a cruise ship marked the spot where a pair of Cuban MIG jets shot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes. It was February 24th, 1996. Pilots Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales were killed. A third plane, flown by Jose Basulto, escaped.
On Thursday relatives of the men died and their supporters will gather at the Opa-locka Airport from where the planes took off in 1996; they will later attend a memorial in Hialeah.
During the 1990s, Brothers to the Rescue pilots routinely flew over the Florida Straits in an effort to spot, and help rescue, Cubans who were fleeing the island by boat and raft. The group had been warned about flying over Cuban airspace. After the pilots were shot down, an investigation was launched by the U.S. government which concluded that the Brothers to the Rescue planes were attacked over international waters on orders from Fidel Castro relayed through his brother Raul.
The incident halted the Clinton administration's efforts to reach out to Castro government and paved the way for the Helms Burton Act, which turned the U.S. embargo to Cuba into permanent law.
Thursday's anniversary comes one day after the first anniversary of the death of Cuban political prisoner Orlando Zapata Tamayo who died as the result of an 83-day hunger strike. He was imprisoned for disrespecting authority.
Zapata's death drew worldwide attention to the plight of the island's dissidents in advance of that anniversary, the Cuban government detained Zapata's mother for 12 hours. On Wednesday, the U.S. issued a statement condemning the treatment of Zapata's mother and commemorating his death.
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