By Patricia Grogg
HAVANA, Mar 13 1999 (IPS)

At the trial in Cuba of Salvadoran national Ernesto Cruz Leon, who could be sentenced to death on charges of terrorism, the prosecutor accused the leading U.S.-based Cuban exile group of organising a 1997 string of explosions in tourist installations here.

But the testimony and evidence presented at the four-day trial, which was open to the foreign press and diplomatic corps, did not take many Cubans by surprise.

“That is well-known, so much money to stage attacks could only have come from there,” said retired journalist Rene Albert as he patiently waited to buy a special six-page edition on the case by the government organ ‘Granma’.

Cruz Leon was accused of planting explosives in five Havana hotels and a restaurant from July to September 1997. An Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, was killed and 11 were injured in the bombings.

Prosecutor Rafael Pino Becquer described Cruz Leon as an “instrument” of the Miami-based Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), the leading and most fervently anti-Castro Cuban exile group in the United States, which was founded in 1981.

“This man is the trigger of a weapon financed and directed by the Cuban-American National Foundation and Luis Posada Carriles,” said Pino Becquer, who asked for the death penalty for Cruz Leon.

Posada Carriles is known in Cuba for his role in the bombing of a ‘Cubana de Aviacion’ airplane on Oct 6, 1976, in which 73 people, mainly Cubans, were killed.

Prosecutors presented fragments of newspaper reports in which Posada Carriles admitted that Cruz Leon “was contracted” by someone who worked for him, and that his operations were financed by CANF.

But the star witness at the trial was double agent Francisco Alvarado. A Guatemalan who has lived in Cuba since 1960, Alvarado was infiltrated by Cuban security services into a paramilitary organisation known as the National Cuban Front (NCF) in 1993.

Alvarado – known to the NCF as “agent 44” and as “agent Fraile” to the Cuban security services – detailed his contacts with the Miami-based organisation, which had given him an explosive device five times more powerful than those used by Cruz Leon.

He testified that he was ordered to place the explosive in the popular Tropicana cabaret at show-time.

He also said CANF president Jose Hernandez and two other leaders of the group, Horacio Garcia and Arnaldo Monzon, offered him 60,000 dollars to carry out the attack.

Also involved in planning the bombing was Luis Zuniga, today a representative of the U.S. government on the Geneva-based United Nations Commission on Human Rights, Alvarado added.

“Hernandez’ aim was and is to kill Fidel Castro. For that purpose, we even identified a residency that the Cuban president supposedly used in Siboney,” a residential neighbourhood on the westside of Havana, he testified.

Based on Alvarado’s testimony and other information, the prosecutor denounced the “innumerable crimes” committed by CANF, whose leaders met with President Bill Clinton less than two weeks ago.

In a written statement to the court, Italian businessman Justino Di Celmo blamed “the United States and the counter- revolutionary mafia in Miami” for the death of his son Fabio, 32, the Italian tourist killed in a Sep 4, 1997 explosion staged by Cruz Leon in the Copacabana hotel.

But above and beyond proving Cruz Leon’s guilt, which the defendant himself admitted in his first statement in court Monday, the testimony of several witnesses highlighted the upsurge of aggression against Cuba this decade.

Witness testimony and documents revealed in court laid to rest rumours that the bombings of tourist installations were the work of internal dissidents or “repentant Cuban soldiers.”

When the rash of explosions took place, members of small, illegal opposition groups in Cuba rejected such reports and said they advocated dialogue, tolerance and peaceful methods.

CANF, meanwhile, defended the right of Cubans living on the island to “choose the instruments they find within their reach” to overthrow the government of Castro.

Cruz Leon appealed to “Cuban benevolence” to spare his life and once again asked for forgiveness for his acts. However, most observers believe he will be sentenced to death. The alternative would be a 30-year jail sentence. The court has 12 days as of Friday to hand down a verdict.

According to Cuban law, the verdict will be automatically appealed to the Supreme Court. The State Council can also grant a pardon.

The death penalty has been applied 12 times in the past 10 years in Cuba, and the government says it will remain on the books as long as the aggression from abroad continues.

In a letter sent to leftist parliamentarians of other nations this week, the president of the Cuban parliament, Ricardo Alarcon, defended Cuba’s right and “duty to protect ourselves and protect others from (U.S.) aggression that has not ceased in four decades” – a reference to the 38-year embargo against Cuba.

Alarcon’s letter coincided with a bid by political parties in the region to suspend Cuba from the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino), due to a previous trial of four dissidents on charges of “sedition.”

The trial of Cruz Leon began a week after the four founders of the Working Group for Internal Dissidence were tried here.

The four are currently awaiting sentencing. Vladimiro Roca faces a possible six-year sentence, and Martha Beatriz Roque, Felix Antonio Bonne and Rene de Jesus Gomez Manzano could be jailed for five years, for having supposedly committed “acts against state security, related to the crime of sedition.”

Cuban authorities reject arguments that the four are “prisoners of conscience” and “peaceful dissidents,” and insist that they work in the service of “a foreign power.”

Alarcon’s letter, to which IPS had access, accused the United States of pouring considerable funding into trying to fabricate “opposition within and outside of Cuba” over the past four decades.

The U.S. government has sent 120,000 dollars to “so-called independent journalists” as part of its “subversion programme” against Cuba, according to Alarcon.

The reporters carry out illegal activities here, producing stories mainly for Miami, home to the largest part of the Cuban exile community in the United States.

Alarcon added that the U.S. budget law for the present fiscal year contains “11 amendments to extend the reach of the Helms- Burton law, and assigns ‘no less than’ two million dollars to foment ‘opposition’ in Cuba.”

The Helms-Burton law, enacted on Mar 12, 1996, stiffened the economic embargo against Cuba and stipulated sanctions for companies from third party countries that do business with this country.

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