Tony Bryant; Ex-Panther Jailed in Cuba
Tony Bryant, a former Black Panther who spent 11 years in a Cuban prison after hijacking a plane bound for Miami and diverting it to Havana, died Thursday in Miami of leukemia. He was 60.
Bryant, who grew up in San Bernardino, came out of his experience in Cuba a firm anti-Communist. He was freed and expelled from Cuba in 1980 and tried in Miami for the hijacking, receiving five years on parole, after several former Cuban political prisoners testified about his valor and friendship while in the Cuban prison.
Bryant’s 1984 book “Hijack” recounts prison life under Fidel Castro and his experiences witnessing constant beatings and occasional executions. His anti-Castro militancy led him to start a conservative magazine for African Americans in 1989, but the publication was short-lived.
Bryant joined Commandos L, an armed anti-Castro group, and became head of its military operations in the early 1990s. He quit the militant scene in 1994 and ran unsuccessfully for Miami’s City Commission in 1997.
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