dove the plane to below 1,000 feet. He flew the plane to Frankfurt, where he requested and received asylum. He later went to the United States, where he flew various aircraft, raced boats, and was a pilot for Continental Airlines. In 1971, stunt pilot Ladislav Bezák a winner of the FAI World Aerobatic Championships in 1960 defected by flying to West Germany. He brought his wife and four sons along in a Zlin 226 that took off in Prague and landed in Nuremberg, where all six were awarded political asylum by West Germany. Dominican Republic In April 1959, Captain Juan de Dios Ventura Simó defected from the Dominican Air Force in a de Havilland Vampire jet. He first flew to Puerto Rico in order to ask for political asylum in the United States, but soon left the country to join a group of Dominican exiles in Venezuela. In June 1959, they organized a Cuban-backed guerrilla campaign against Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, but were quickly overwhelmed by Trujillo's superior military force. Ventura Simó, one of the few survivors, was captured and tortured by Trujillo's men, who organized a disinformation campaign against the opposition by claiming that Ventura Simó was not a real defector but a government spy who had led the rebels to their ruin. Once Ventura Simó was no longer useful, he was killed in prison and put on a plane which crashed at sea in order to frame the death as an aviation accident. Egypt On January 19, 1964, Egyptian Air Force pilot Mahmud Abbas Hilmi defected from el-Arish Air Base to Hatzor Air Base in Israel in his Yakovlev Yak-11 trainer. Ethiopia In 1976, two Ethiopian pilots defected to Sudan by flying their Northrop F-5A fighters to Kassala; the jets were returned to Ethiopia. In 1977, Ethiopian Air Force pilot Major Afeworki Mekonnen defected to Somalia with his English Electric Canberra bomber. The incident took place during the Ogaden War. Throughout the 1980s and early 90s (up to 1991), several Ethiopian pilots defected with their planes to Sudan and Yemen. On 26 May 1991, the pilots of seven Mi-8s, an L-39, two An-12s, three MiG-23s, three Mi-24s and three Mi-35s defected from Ethiopia to Djibouti after the fall of the Mengistu government. The aircraft were all returned to Ethiopia on August 8. East Germany On March 7, 1969, East German Air Force JG-1 pilot Hauptmann Gerhard Scharnetzki