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The plane that was hijacked in 2003 in Florida this month. Photo: AP

Stolen Cuban planes still in limbo in America amid countries’ strained ties

AP

At face value, they are three old planes not worth much more than their parts and scrap metal.

Stolen from the Cuban government over six months in 2003 - two by hijackers, one by its pilot - all three landed at Key West International Airport, a 185-kilometre flight from Havana to the gleaming shores of the US.

Fidel Castro demanded the planes be returned. Instead, they were seized by US courts to satisfy part of a US$27 million judgment won by a Cuban-American woman who unwittingly married a Cuban spy in Miami.

The story of what happened to the planes since is another chapter in the history of stymied, contentious US-Cuba relations, with the new owners unable to get the planes anywhere.

The first of the three planes to land in Key West was a crop-duster that pilot Nemencio Carlos Alonso Guerra used to fly seven passengers to the US in November 2002.

Cuba wanted the biplane back, but a Florida judge agreed with Ana Margarita Martinez that it should be seized and sold to partially pay the judgment she was awarded under an anti-terrorism law. In 1996, her husband, Juan Pablo Roque, had fled back to Cuba after infiltrating the Miami-based anti-Castro group Brothers to the Rescue.

The Antonov AN-2 Colt was auctioned in 2003 and Martinez placed the highest bid, US$7,000.

Even if it could be flown, the plane would have to be deregistered in Cuba or given special FAA authorisation in the US. That, however, requires maintenance documents and certificates proving the plane is safe, all of them in Cuba.

Don Soldini, who purchased a hijacked DC-3 and is on good terms with Cuba's leaders, is one of the few who stood a chance of getting the records. "I would've flown it back," he said last week.

In March 2003, the Cuban DC-3 was hijacked by six knife-wielding men and diverted to Key West. Thirteen days later, a Cuban Antonov airliner was hijacked to Key West by Adermis Wilson Gonzalez, who is serving a 20-year sentence for air piracy.

Like the biplane before, both planes were auctioned. But their new owners face the same problem. They were unable to fly the planes without the maintenance documents.

And with US-Cuban relations the way they are, the planes are unlikely to ever fly again.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Stolen Cuban planes still in limbo on American soil
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