William Lee "Bill" Brent (1931 – November 4, 2006) was an American member of the Black Panther Party and defector, best known for hijacking a passenger jet and diverting it to Cuba in 1969, where he spent the last 37 years of his life in exile.

Brent was selling drugs and committing petty crimes by the time he was in junior high school, and at age 17 he enlisted in the U.S. Army by using a fake birth certificate.

[2] Police caught up to them on Seventh Street near the Hall of Justice, prompting a shootout, where one of the officers, Lieutenant Dermott Creedon, was critically wounded.

[4] Brent spent 22 months in an immigration jail in Cuba when he arrived, and after his release he earned a Spanish literature degree from the University of Havana, and taught English at various junior and senior high schools.

In a 1996 interview with the Associated Press, Brent said he missed the United States and the African-American community, but he was unwilling to return to possibly face life imprisonment for air piracy and kidnapping.