article_snippet.sent: For 43 years Cuba has provided refuge for Charlie Hill from facing charges that he killed a New Mexico police officer and hijacked an airliner to Havana.
article_snippet.sent: After five decades of Cold War-era mistrust, the United States and Cuba are working to re-establish full diplomatic ties, but cases like Charlie Hill's present an obstacle to an improved relationship.
article_snippet.sent: Critics of the new opening to Cuba say Havana's harboring of fugitives like Charlie Hill is enough of a reason to maintain a hard line against the government of Raul Castro and keep Cuba on the State Department list of countries that support terrorism.
article_snippet.sent: State Dept. recommends removing Cuba from terrorism list .
article_snippet.sent: Hill, now 65, may extradite himself first, saying the warming of relations between the United States and Cuba Cuba could mean an end to what himself calls himself "exile" on the communist-run, Caribbean island, even if himself return brings jail time.
article_snippet.sent: Take us to Cuba, The hijackers told the pilot.
article_snippet.sent: The trio knew Cuba would most likely let The hijackers stay.
article_snippet.sent: After seizing power in 1959, Fidel Castro blasted Washington for failing to send back the Batista regime officials who streamed to Miami to escape Fidel Castro's revolutionary tribunals, effectively ending the extradition agreement between the two countries.
article_snippet.sent: If anything went down, you went to Cuba," Hill said.
article_snippet.sent: Cuban officials denied Cuban request for military training to fight with revolutionary groups in Africa.
article_snippet.sent: In 1996, then-New Mexico Rep. Bill Richardson traveled to Cuba to discuss Hill's extradition with Fidel Castro's.
article_snippet.sent: I talked to Fidel Castro and Fidel Castro said, 'No way, under no circumstances would Fidel Castro turn them over, that them were legitimate fugitives," Bill Richardson told CNN.
article_snippet.sent: but I wouldn't even be allowed to talk to Fidel Castro.