Family members carry photos of the victims of a Cuban airliner which downed in 1976 during a ceremony at Havana's Colon cemetery yesterday. - REUTERS
HAVANA, (Reuters):
FAMILY AND friends of 73 people killed when a Cuban airliner was blown out of the sky 29 years ago marked the tragedy's anniversary yesterday by bitterly accusing the United States of harbouring the bombers.
Some 200 people gathered at Havana's main cemetery to remember the victims of what Cuba views as its own 9/11, even as President George W. Bush delivered a major speech on terrorism in the United States and said that those who harbour terrorists are equally guilty.
"What happened Sept. 11, 2001, in the United States is not foreign to us," said Margarita Morales, whose father and the junior Cuban fencing team he coached died in the 1976 plane blast.
"The families of the victims in the United States are waiting like we are for justice. ... We demand (President Bush) stop looking for excuses to protect (Luis) Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch," she told the mourners, many of whom, with tears in their eyes, wore T-shirts or carried placards with pictures of the dead.
Cuba accuses the United States of using militant, anti-Communist Cuban exiles like Carriles and Bosch to conduct terrorist attacks against the country since President Fidel Castro came to power in a 1959 revolution.
