Thirty-one Cuban prisoners boarded an airplane for their homeland Saturday, a day after a SWAT team stormed a federal prison and ended a 10-day hostage standoff over deportations.
The Cubans, wearing handcuffs and leg irons, left Birmingham Municipal Airport shortly after 9 a.m. aboard a Justice Department Boeing 727. Federal officials wouldn't say when the plane was scheduled to land in Cuba.The 31 had been scheduled for deportation Aug. 22, the day before the hostage drama began at Talladega Federal Correctional Institution, 40 miles east of Birmingham in central Alabama.
In a lightning-quick strike early Friday, teams from the FBI and the Bureau of Prisons rescued seven men and two women held hostage by 121 Cuban inmates. None of the hostages was hurt and only one inmate suffered a minor injury, federal officials said.
The government had refused to give in to the inmates' demand that deportations be stopped. The inmates, some of whom had said they would rather die than return to Cuba, were among about 125,000 who came to the United States in the Mariel boatlift in 1980.
The SWAT team moved in after hostages communicated with hand signals to medical personnel allowed in to see them that they felt they were in immediate danger from the detainees.
Warden Roger F. Scott said the Cubans had used the hostages' identification cards to hold a lottery to determine which one would be killed first.
Friends and relatives of the hostages rejoiced at their successful rescue.
A relative of Byron Sanders, one of the freed hostages, said the family was relieved to have him back safe, but added: "They've asked us not to even say anything until he gets straightened out."
The Rev. Richard Donohoe of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Anniston, where two of the hostages are members, said the newly freed parishioners were "overwhelmed with joy."