Curbing Cuban Hijackings

Item: On July 7, 1996, a Cuban military officer forced a Cuban plane carrying 16 people to fly to the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. No one was injured. Lt. Col. Jose Fernandez Pupo was acquitted in Washington of hijacking.

Item: On July 26, 1996, an Iberia Airlines jumbo jet flying from Madrid to Havana with 286 people aboard was forced to land in Miami by a man brandishing scissors and a fake bomb. No one was hurt. But Sadd’o Mohammed Ibrahim Intissar, 28, was convicted of hijacking and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Item: In March, six Cubans took over a passenger flight from Cuba to the United States. Last week, jurors in Key West, Fla., convicted them of hijacking. And while their sentencing is pending, they face a mandatory 20-year imprisonment.

What do these cases share? They speak to the confused U.S. policy regarding Cuba and how it translates in cases of airline piracy. But in a sign of progress, federal prosecutors are taking a harder line and ending what was an irreconcilable legal distinction between Cuban hijackers and those from elsewhere.

In the past, hijackers from countries other than Cuba got slammed in prison for 20 years when they reached this nation’s shores. But only one Cuban national has received that kind of sentence. In Key West, federal prosecutors convinced jurors that a stern verdict and harsh sentence would send an unequivocal signal to other would-be hijackers in Cuba that using violence to get to the U.S. was unacceptable. Defense lawyers, naturally, sought to depict this crime as a “freedom flight.” The jury didn’t buy this, deciding it was, indeed, utterly unacceptable for anyone to press a knife to an airline pilot’s throat and hijack a plane.

The tough stance taken by prosecutors in this case, of course, reflects post-9/11 traumas and realities. But it also should provide one more impetus to fix the muddled U.S. policies toward an antagonistic island neighbor. For more than 40 years, 10 U.S. presidents have tried to tame Cuban dictator Fidel Castro; none has succeeded.

U.S. policymakers first decided that economic sanctions would force him out. That didn’t do it. Then, a handful of congressmen tried to engage him, easing some sanctions, allowing some trade, lifting travel and remittance restrictions. That didn’t work, either. This year, U.S. diplomats in Cuba tried an outreach effort to Cuban dissidents; that policy not only failed, it landed many of those the U.S. wanted to help in Castro’s jails.

Indeed, repression and suffering remain hallmarks of Castro’s wretched communist rule. But those fleeing his oppression must not do so via violence and hijackings. Their real hope lies in better U.S. and global efforts to rid Cuba of its tired and tiresome dictator.