By Dalia Acosta
HAVANA, Mar 31 1999 (IPS)

Courts in Cuba have handed down the death penalty this month to two Salvadoran nationals convicted on charges of terrorism.

Diplomatic sources who preferred to remain anonymous told IPS that the court of crimes against state security of the provincial court of Havana sentenced Salvadoran national Otto Rodriguez Llerena to death Tuesday. However, authorities have not yet confirmed the ruling.

Raul Cruz Leon, also from the Central American country of El Salvador, was sentenced to death earlier this month after confessing, like Rodriguez Llerena, to having participated in a spate of hotel bombings in 1997.

In both cases, Cubans watched fragments of the proceedings and the reconstruction of events, which were broadcast on state TV. Both trials were open to the press, unlike an earlier high-profile trial of four Cuban dissidents.

According to the Law on Penal Procedure, the verdicts are to be automatically appealed to the Supreme Popular Court. In case the Court upholds the death sentences, the Council of State will decide whether they are to be commuted.

Rodriguez Llerena pled guilty to planting and detonating a bomb Aug 4, 1997 in the lobby of the Melia Cohiba hotel, owned by the Cuban state and run by the Spanish company ‘Grupo Sol’.

He testified that he had been contracted by Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles, who allegedly planned the 1976 bombing of a ‘Cubana de Aviacion’ airplane which left 73 dead.

Posada Carriles sparked a scandal last year when he told the New York Times that he had links to the Miami-based Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF), the most influential and vociferously anti-Castro Cuban exile organisation.

He also claimed to have planned, from Central America, the attacks on tourist venues in Cuba, and announced that he was organising new actions.

Rodriguez Llerena was arrested Jun 10, 1998 while attempting to smuggle 1,519 grams of explosives into Cuba, which according to a witness who testified at the trial were to be used to blow up several historic sites.

The witness, Juan Francisco Fernandez, a Cuban undercover agent, was to receive the explosives, which were to destroy the mausoleum containing the remains of legendary Argentine-Cuban guerrilla leader Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, as well as other targets.

“I am truly repentant of my acts, and I want to say that I had no knowledge of many of the things that have been mentioned here,” Rodriguez Llerena declared in court, asking to be forgiven by “Cuban society, the world and my family.”

But Prosecutor Enrique Nunez Guillo ended up calling for the death penalty, rather than 30 years in prison as he originally requested.

Local observers in Cuba say the Council of State, the highest- level government organ, presided over by President Fidel Castro, will in all likelihood grant clemency to at least one of the two Salvadorans, namely Rodriguez Llerena.

The case of Cruz Leon, who pled guilty to planting bombs in six hotels and the ‘La Bodeguita del Medio’ restaurant in Havana, is aggravated by the death of Italian tourist Favio Di Celmo, killed in one of the attacks.

The two trials revived the controversy over the death penalty, which has reportedly been handed down by Cuban courts 15 times in the past 10 years.

But they also cast serious doubts on CANF’s supposed nature as a pacifist political group, and pointed the finger at the U.S. government for tolerating the planning, in U.S. territory, of terrorist actions against Cuba.

Cuban Vice-President Carlos Lage brought that accusation Mar 24 before the Geneva-based United Nations Commission on Human Rights, currently involved in its 55th period of sessions.

Referring to the case of the Salvadorans, the Commission’s special rapporteur on mercenaries, Enrique Bernales Ballesteros, acknowledged Saturday that Cuba had been affected by the activity of mercenaries.

Bernales Ballesteros pointed out that the two defendants had admitted their responsibility for the attacks. He also announced that he would visit Cuba in the near future, on the invitation of the Castro administration, to verify the damages caused by the bombings.

The special rapporteur said the practice of hiring mercenaries to carry out attacks and wage war violated human rights and the right of free determination of peoples. He described mercenaries and those who hired them as “murderers” who failed to respect the laws of war.

In 1989, the UN General Assembly approved the International Convention Against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. It has been ratified by only 16 countries, however, while 22 are needed in order for it to go into effect.

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