Cuba to snub trial on downed anti-Castro planes

Havana, Aug 21 (EFE).- Cuba will not attend a trial set by a Miami judge for November 13 to prosecute the Havana government for the shooting down last year of two planes owned by a Cuban exile group and killing its four pilots, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

"We are a sovereign state and we will not attend any trial in U.S. territory," said Marianela Ferriol, who accused Washington of being "the only and real culprit behind the incident."

Ferriol was referring to the two planes of the anti-Castro exile group Brothers to the Rescue gunned down by a Mig plane of the Cuban Air Force on February 24, 1996, claiming the aircraft had violated Cuban air space.

According to reports coming from the United States, relatives of the pilots have filed a suit against the Cuban government and its Air Forces, citing the Anti-Terrorist Law promulgated in 1996 by the U.S. Congress.

Meanwhile, the Foreign Ministry denied news reports of a secret pact between the Cuban and Bolivian governments for the search of the remains of Cuban-Argentine guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara in the South American country.

"The reports are totally false," said Ferriol. "That agreement never existed and we could fully and categorically deny it."

The remains of Guevara were found on June 2 by a joint Cuban and Argentine scientific team in a common grave in Vallegrande, Bolivia, along with those of six of his fellow guerrillas.

The remains, brought to Cuba two weeks later, are to be placed in a mausoleum being built in the central city of Villa Clara, some 300 kilometers from Havana, where Che carried out his first guerilla military mission. EFE

Distributed by Cubanet