A hijacker who went on the lam for 40 years after commandeering a plane-load of New Yorkers and hijacking them to Cuba was hauled back to the United States yesterday following his surprise surrender.
Luis Armando Peña Soltren, now 66 — and the FBI’s longest-wanted fugitive — was arrested at JFK Airport on air-piracy charges.
“It is an example of the principle that, for the FBI, fugitive cases don’t become closed cases until the fugitive is brought to justice,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Joseph Demarest.
Soltren and two other men allegedly burst into the cabin of Pan Am Flight 281, which was heading to Puerto Rico on Nov. 24, 1968, and demanded that it be flown to Cuba.
The other two, José Rafael Rios Cruz and Miguel Castro, were busted in the mid-1970s and pleaded guilty.
Another man, who was not on the flight but was described in a criminal complaint as a leader of the Puerto Rican Movement for Liberation, was indicted, but acquitted.
Prosecutors said Soltren — a Puerto Rican national — and his accomplices on the flight were armed to the teeth with guns and knives that were sneaked onto the plane in a diaper bag.
The suspect, who has a wife and two sons living in Florida or Puerto Rico, recently made it known to officials that he wanted to return and face the music.
A source said he faces serious health issues, which may have motivated his surrender.
The State Department arranged for security personnel to accompany him early yesterday morning. He was arrested upon his arrival at JFK.
He is in federal custody, the source said, and will be arraigned tomorrow.
The Pan Am hijacking was the second that day and the 22nd that year.
“This man came at me with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other,” stewardess June Berry, 24, told The Post at the time.
“He told me, ‘Open the door [to the cockpit]. We’re going to Cuba.’ ”
The passengers were later brought back on a State Department-chartered plane.
Earlier that day, the chartered craft had returned 83 passengers and seven crew from Eastern Airlines Flight 727, which was diverted to Havana while on a Chicago-to-Miami flight.