American Pilot ‘Obviously’ a Spy, Nicaraguan Asserts

The Sandinista marine patrol that downed an American Contra sympathizer over Nicaragua fired several warning shots before puncturing the plane’s fuel tank with rifle fire, the Defense Ministry said Wednesday.

Ministry spokeswoman Capt. Rosa Pasos said the plane flown by Illinois farmer James Jordan Denby drew immediate suspicion because it was on an unauthorized flight over airspace frequently violated by U.S.-backed Contras.

“I don’t know whether he just didn’t hear the shots or ignored them, but he kept circling the area,” Capt. Pasos said. “He was obviously spying. There is no doubt about it. He said he knows that area well. He wasn’t lost.”

Denby, 57, was arrested Sunday after being forced to land his Cessna 172 on a beach in the southeastern corner of Nicaragua. The Interior Ministry said he is being questioned by security police in Managua, but it announced no formal charges.

A ‘Big Fish’

Defense Minister Humberto Ortega, in reporting the arrest Tuesday, called Denby a “big fish” who carried flight logs, maps, letters and other documents that “clearly confirm (his) deep links with the war of aggression by the United States against Nicaragua.”

But documents examined by reporters Tuesday appeared to confirm only those aspects of Denby’s past collaboration that he had already admitted publicly, such as feeding rebel troops on his 700-acre Costa Rican farm and flying their wounded to hospitals.

The government Wednesday offered additional details of what it called Denby’s illegal flight from Honduras down Nicaragua’s Atlantic coast en route from the United States to San Jose, Costa Rica.

Sergio Buitrago, Nicaragua’s director of civil aviation, said Denby asked permission last Friday to fly along that coast to the Costa Rican border. Buitrago said he replied with a telex asking for a precise routing and an estimated time for entering and leaving Nicaraguan airspace.

“He never replied, so his flight was illegal,” the official said.

Buitrago said Denby’s motive for flying down the Atlantic coast, rather than the shorter Pacific route, was “too suspicious.” He said no private foreign aircraft had flown the Atlantic route in more than two years.

Spoke to Reporter

Daniel R. Browning, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter who spoke to Denby in Belize last Friday, said the farmer told him he chose the Atlantic route “because he’d never flown it before.”

He said Denby claimed to have stopped helping the Contras 18 months ago and “obviously didn’t think he was a marked man” in Nicaragua.

The reporter said Denby told him he planned to “hug the coast” during his flight. But Buitrago said the farmer “must have flown out over the ocean” because he was not detected by radar in the two principal coastal cities, Puerto Cabezas and Bluefields.

Capt. Pasos said San Juan del Norte, where Denby was shot down, is an “area of constant violations” by small planes delivering military supplies to Contra forces inside Nicaragua.

She said Sandinista forces in that area do not have radios to make contact with pilots and are under orders to open fire against any suspicious aircraft.

Browning said Denby invited him and a Post-Dispatch photographer to fly with him to Costa Rica to report on him and other farmers from Illinois who have settled near the Nicaraguan border.

The reporter said they decided not to make the flight because the 35-year-old aircraft looked unsafe. Denby’s last words to them, he said, were: “Are you sure you don’t want to come along? You’re going to miss a hell of a ride.”