The Revolution has never sponsored terrorism, but this scourge has taken the lives of 3,478 Cubans

“Cuba will always pay tribute to the victims of the October 6, 1976, terrorist attack. We have historical memory and demand justice," Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, President of Cuba’s Councils of State and Ministers, tweeted on the occasion of the 43rd anniversary of the crime in Barbados.With a pilgrimage to Havana’s Colón Cemetery, on Victims of State Terrorism Day, the 73 people who lost their lives in the bombing of a Cubana Airlines plane were remembered yesterday morning.

Alongside relatives of the victims were Luis Antonio Torres Iríbar, first secretary of the Party in the capital, and Reinaldo García Zapata, president of the Provincial Assembly of People’s Power, as well as representatives of the National Institute of Sports, Physical Education, and Recreation (Inder), among others.On October 6, 1976, Cubana Flight 455 exploded off the coast of Barbados, after bombs were planted aboard by terrorists.

Fifty-seven Cubans lost their lives, including young members of the country’s fencing team, returning to Cuba after winning gold medals in the Central American and Caribbean Championship, several of whom had not reached 20 years of age.Also killed were 11 Guyanese and five citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. Lost were “useful lives dedicated to noble activities, which were cut short by an act of violence,” said Cubana Airlines pilot Eliecer Romero during the commemoration held at the Revolutionary Armed Forces Pantheon.

Families of victims continue to demand that the U.S. government be held accountable, said Captain Romero, who at the time of the attack was only nine, but still remembers Fidel's impassioned eulogy, when he said, “And when an energetic and virile people cries, injustice trembles!”The infamous counterrevolutionary terrorists of Cuban origin, Orlando Bosch Ávila and Luis Posada Carriles, the intellectual authors of this abominable act, never paid for their crime.

Cuba repeatedly denounced these dangerous murderers, who lived on with impunity, under the protection of the U.S. government, until their deaths, never expressing the slightest remorse for the crimes they committed.

Venezuelans Freddy Lugo and Hernán Ricardo, who planted the bombs aboard the Cuban plane, were sentenced to 20 years in prison. These four international criminals were trained and paid by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The crime in Barbados was not the first, nor the last, terrorist attack against the Cuban Revolution. Such acts have taken the lives of 3,478 Cubans, and 2,099 were left disabled, victims of imperialist aggression against the Cuban people.