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10/14/09 - NEW YORK TIMES - Hearing for ’68 Hijacking Suspect Recalls Bygone
Age

By COLIN MOYNIHAN

Forty years ago, the East Harlem neighborhood known as Spanish Harlem, or
sometimes El Barrio, was a thriving Puerto Rican enclave where sidewalk
domino games took place near garden casitas, and nationalist groups like the
Young Lords preached ethnic pride.

Now, decades later, much has changed. For instance, the building on East
118th Street where a man accused of a 1968 hijacking, Luis Armando Peña
Soltren, once lived is gone, succeeded by a bland home for the aged. A few
blocks away, on East 110th Street, another building that was once the home
of Jose Rafael Rios Cruz, who pleaded guilty in 1976 to the same hijacking,
has also been torn down and replaced.

The hijacking of Pan American Flight 281, leaving New York and bound for
Puerto Rico, was one of the more daring and colorful crimes to emanate from
that age of East Harlem radical chic, and now that case appears to be on the
verge of an unusual conclusion.

On Tuesday morning in a federal courthouse in Manhattan, Mr. Soltren, 66,
appeared in front of Magistrate Judge Douglas F. Eaton and pleaded not
guilty to charges including air piracy and kidnapping.

Mr. Soltren, who had been a fugitive for more than 40 years, voluntarily
returned from Cuba to New York on Sunday to answer charges that were filed
against him in 1968.

State Department officials said on Tuesday that the Cuban government had
given its authorization for Mr. Soltren, who is a United States citizen, to
leave Havana, but that no negotiations over the matter had taken place. His
return was also not part of any formal extradition process, officials said.

Mr. Soltren had been in contact with the United States Interests Section in
Havana for some years and had expressed a desire to return to the United
States, government officials said. He came back accompanied by a State
Department diplomatic security official. Once in New York, he was handed
over to the F.B.I.

On Tuesday, the defendant listened to earphones carrying a Spanish-language
translation of the judge’s words.

“Back in 1968, a federal grand jury in this district filed an indictment
charge against you,” the judge said, adding that court papers from the time
said that Mr. Soltren “seized control of the aircraft and took all of the
crew and passengers to Cuba, thereby committing the crime known as air
piracy.”

The 41-year-old indictment says that on Nov. 24, 1968, Mr. Soltren boarded
Flight 281 bound for Puerto Rico. Then, while the plane was in midflight,
the indictment said, Mr. Soltren stormed the cockpit with two other men,
including Mr. Cruz, armed with guns and knives they had smuggled on board in
a baby’s diaper bag.

Nobody was injured in the hijacking, and the passengers and crew were
returned to the United States.

Two men, Mr. Cruz and Miguel Castro, were arrested in the case in the 1970s
on returning to the United States and sentenced to prison terms of 15 and 12
years respectively. A fourth man, Alejandro Figueroa, was acquitted by a
judge in 1969.

An F.B.I. spokesman said Mr. Soltren had arranged his return with the F.B.I.
and State Department because he wanted to see his family, including his
wife. After the proceeding on Tuesday, Mr. Soltren’s lawyer, James Neuman,
acknowledged that Mr. Soltren’s wife had been present in the courtroom, but
he declined to discuss the case further.

Countless news stories have played out on the blocks of East Harlem since
Mr. Soltren left for Cuba, but a mention of his name a few hours after
Tuesday’s court proceeding elicited a degree of recognition among some
people.

“He’s the one who took the plane,” said a man who gave his name as Felix and
his age as 83, who was one of several veteran neighborhood observers
congregating on Tuesday afternoon in a paved courtyard on East 110th Street,
also known as Tito Puente Way.

“I remember,” said Aurelio Torrez, 59. “I saw it all on TV.”

Even decades later, the men recalled many details of the hijacking. They
laughed quietly at its audacity, nearly incomprehensible now, in an age of
high security. But, they insisted, Mr. Soltren was not to be admired.

“Hijacking is bad,” Fidel Cruz said.

Mr. Torrez agreed.

“He is no hero,” he said of Mr. Soltren. “No he is not.”

Marc Lacey contributed reporting.