Cuban Hijack Suspect Surrenders in U.S.

A man claiming to have hand grenades hijacked a Cuban airliner with his wife and 3-year-old son aboard to the United States on Tuesday, then surrendered to American authorities, officials said.

It was the second Cuban plane diverted to the United States in less than two weeks, and the enraged government in Havana blamed American officials because of what it called the “inconceivable” way six air pirates from the island were earlier given the option to leave a U.S. jail on bond after a similar incident.

The twin-propeller Antonov-24 airliner, carrying 25 passengers and six crew members, landed safely in Key West about 11:30 a.m. and was surrounded by uniformed police and federal officials. The Cubana Airlines plane had been escorted by two U.S. Air Force F-16 Flying Falcons that rushed over from Homestead Air Reserve Base.

The accused hijacker, identified by U.S. officials as Adermis Wilson Gonzalez, 33 or 34, wore a red jacket with the word “America” stitched in white on the back. He was one of the first people to exit the aircraft, and carried a small boy, police in Key West said.

“The boy wasn’t afraid, he wasn’t scared,” Officer Steve Torrence said in a telephone interview. “When he set him down, the boy grabbed his leg, as he would a family member.”

Judy Orihuela, spokeswoman for the Miami office of the FBI, said Gonzalez had appeared to be carrying a pair of harmless, homemade dummy grenades. She said he was in FBI custody and is being questioned.

According to Cuban government officials, the plane, originally carrying 46 passengers and crew members, was commandeered Monday evening while on a domestic flight from the small Isle of Youth to Havana. The hijacker reportedly said that if he wasn’t taken to the United States, he would detonate his grenades.

However, the Soviet-built plane wasn’t carrying enough fuel to cross the Florida Straits, so it landed at Havana’s Jose Marti International Airport.

After a 14-hour standoff that closed the airport -- Cuba’s busiest -- to air traffic, the Antonov was refueled and the hijacker allowed some passengers, including children, to leave. According to a Cuban government statement, the air pirate reportedly holed up in the rear of the plane. The aircraft then took off for Key West, 90 miles to the north.

On March 19, six Cuban men wielding knives and a hatchet hijacked another plane on the same route from the Isle of Youth, and forced the twin-engine DC-3 carrying 37 people to fly to Key West.

After being arrested by U.S. officials, the six were charged with conspiracy to seize a plane by force, a federal offense that carries a maximum 20-year prison sentence, but a magistrate refused a request from prosecutors to deny the men bond.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Hugh Morgan in Key West ordered the defendants freed and kept under house arrest, if they agreed to post $3,750 each toward a $100,000 bond. Their attorneys have characterized their act not as a crime, but as a flight to freedom from Cuba’s Communist dictatorship.

The six men are being held at a federal detention center in Miami pending the government’s appeal of Morgan’s ruling. But the Cuban government claimed the lax treatment emboldened the latest hijacker.

“This act is the direct consequence of the encouragement received by hijackers with the inconceivable conduct of U.S. authorities,” the Cuban government said in a statement late Monday. “The entire responsibility for what may occur falls upon the government of that country.”

U.S. officials insisted the latest episode would be dealt with as a serious crime.

“If anyone including the Cuban government thinks we are going to be lenient with this defendant because he’s Cuban, they are wrong,” U.S. Atty. Marcos Jiminez said in Miami. “These individuals who commit crimes of violence should not be considered heroes. They should be considered criminals.”

Eleven other Cubans who were aboard the DC-3 have chosen to stay in the United States and seek residency. It is not known how many in the latest hijacking have asked to stay.