José Basulto

José Jesús Basulto León (born August 8, 1940) is a former CIA-trained Cuban political dissident and the leader of the nonprofit Cuban exile organization Brothers to the Rescue.

Career Since the Cuban Revolution, Basulto participated in various activities intended to subvert or overthrow the Cuban government. After the revolution, he claimed that he was trained by the CIA in intelligence, communications, explosives, sabotage and subversion in Panama, Guatemala, and the United States. He claimed that he was later placed back into Cuba, posing as a physics student at the University of Santiago to help prepare the ground for the Bay of Pigs Invasion.

Aviator and leader of Brothers to the Rescue

Brothers to the Rescue formed in 1991 and describes itself as a humanitarian organization aiming to assist and rescue raft refugees emigrating from Cuba and to "support the efforts of the Cuban people to free themselves from dictatorship through the use of active nonviolence".

The Cuban government, on the other hand, accuses them of involvement in terrorist acts. In the course of many flights throughout the early 1990s, the group's planes made repeated incursions into Cuban territory. While these were widely considered airspace violations, Brothers to the Rescue believes that these were acts of legitimate resistance against the government. In 1996, ignoring a final warning by Cuba, two Brothers to the Rescue planes were shot down by the Cuban Air Force, leading to international condemnation.