Cuba Says Official Defected

Communist Cuba, in an unusually quick announcement, said today that a high government official defected to the West last Saturday and branded him a traitor.

Gustavo Perez Cortt, 53, vice president of the state committee for material and technical supply, defected during a stopover on the regular Prague-Havana flight, the official newspaper Granma said. It did not say where Perez Cortt defected, but the Prague-Havana flight of Cuba’s national airline Cubana makes scheduled stops in Madrid and Gander, Newfoundland. Granma said Perez Cortt’s mother and other relatives lived in the United States.