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CUBA NEWS IN BRIEF.

Article Excerpt
A Florida court convicted a Cuban hijacker of air piracy in the March diversion of a passenger plane to Key West. He faces a sentence of from 20 years to life. The Cuban government lodged a complaint against the State Department for placing Cuba on a list of countries that fail to combat prostitution, forced labor, and other types of trafficking in persons. Cuban authorities have accused the Panamanian government of working with right-wing Cuban-exile organizations to free terrorist Luis Posada Carriles and three others arrested in Panama in 2000 in an alleged scheme to assassinate President Fidel Castro.

Cuban hijacker convicted in Key West

A federal court in Key West took little more than an hour of deliberations to find Adelmis Wilson Gonzalez guilty of air piracy in the March 31 hijacking of a Cuban passenger plane. Lead prosecutor US Attorney Lilly Ann Sanchez said, "There probably could not be a more clear-cut, well-defined, perfect case of air piracy."

Wilson is to be sentenced Sept. 19 and could get life imprisonment. His common-law wife was not prosecuted. Although several media accounts described how she helped in the hijacking, they do not explain why she was not indicted.

Wilson, his wife Leidis Fernandez, and her three-year-old son boarded the Antonov-24 at an airport on the Isla de la Juventud and, brandishing what turned out to be fake hand grenades, forced the pilot to fly to Key West. There were 50 passengers on board,...

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