1968 NY flight hijacker gets 15 years

An American who hijacked a jetliner from New York to Havana in 1968 was sentenced to 15 years in prison after voluntarily surrendering to prosecutors four decades later.

Luis Armando Pena Soltren, now 67, appeared in federal court in Manhattan Tuesday and was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein for his role in a hijacking organized by a Puerto Rican nationalist group. He pleaded guilty in March.

Pena Soltren, then 26, participated in the hijacking because he believed his father in Cuba was critically ill and wanted to visit him, the judge said. He questioned why Pena Soltren joined in a hijacking plot instead of traveling to Cuba through Canada or Mexico.

"I'm trying to imagine how I would feel if someone put a knife to my neck and a gun to my back," the judge said. "I've put myself in a seat in the airplane."

Pena Soltren, who was born in Puerto Rico, has been held without bail in New York since he returned to the United States in October 2009. Prosecutors said in a court filing he deserved a "lengthy sentence." Defense lawyers sought a sentence of no more than four years.

"I want to beg your forgiveness," Pena Soltren told Hellerstein through an interpreter. "I want to apologize to all the people who felt threatened by my desperate action."

Two accomplices pleaded guilty in the hijacking of Puerto Rico-bound Pan Am Flight 281 out of Kennedy Airport on Nov. 24, 1968, prosecutors said. Jose Rafael Rios Cruz was apprehended in 1975, and Miguel Castro was arrested in 1976. Cruz got 15 years in prison, and Castro was sentenced to 12 years. Another man was acquitted at a trial in New York. Six people including Pena Soltren were initially charged in the case. Pena Soltren told the judge in March that he and three others commandeered the jet.

Pena Soltren spent 41 years in Cuba, the government said, and was told he would be prosecuted if he returned to the United States. The Cuban government authorized his departure in 2009, prosecutors said.