CUBA: Three Guatemalans Accused of Terrorism Stand Trial

By Patricia Grogg Reprint | | Print |

Patricia Grogg

HAVANA, Oct 31 2001 (IPS) - Three Guatemalan nationals accused of terrorism in Cuba face sentences of 20 to 30 years in a trial that opens Thursday, according to diplomatic and legal sources.

Nadel Kalam Musalam Barakat, Jazid Iván Fernández and María Elena González were arrested in March 1998 in the Jose Marti international airport smuggling explosives into the country.

Guatemala’s ambassador to Cuba Hugo René Guzmán told IPS that the three individuals, who are accused of committing “crimes against state security,” were being defended by Cuban lawyers.

The Guatemalan government expects a fair trial, said the ambassador, who preferred not to speculate on the outcome of the proceedings, the start of which has coincided with the international crisis triggered by the Sep 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.

Months after the arrests, the Interior Ministry found evidence that the three Guatemalans were involved in planning attacks “ordered and financed by the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF)”, the most fervently anti-Castro organisation of the Cuban exile community in Miami.

Guzmán also reported that the prosecution was seeking a 30-year sentence for Musalam, 25 years for Fernández and 20 for González. Sources with the legal system said that due to the severity of the charges, the three could have been facing the death penalty.

In connection with a 1997 spate of bombings on tourist installations in Cuba, which cost the life of an Italian tourist, Salvadoran citizens Raúl René Cruz León and Otto Rodríguez Llerena were tried from February to March 1999, and sentenced to death.

Cruz León and Rodríguez Llerena have appealed to the Supreme Court, whose ruling in turn must be upheld or overturned by the 31- member Council of State, headed by President Fidel Castro.

According to local authorities, the investigations into the bombings clearly demonstrated CANF’s responsibility for “an escalation of terrorism” targetting Cuba, as well as the existence of an anti-Castro “terrorist network in Central America” headed by Cuban-American militant Luis Posada Carriles.

Posada Carriles has been in prison in Panama since November, on charges of plotting to assassinate Castro at the 10th Ibero- American Summit, held there at that time.

In a 1998 interview with the New York Times, Posada Carriles admitted his ties with CANF and that he had masterminded attacks on Cuba. He is also held responsible for the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner with 73 passengers on board.

The Cuban government’s request for the extradition of Posada Carriles was turned down by the government of Mireya Moscoso, despite a formal pledge by the Castro administration that the death penalty, which does not exist in Panamanian legislation, would not be applied in the case.

Cuban authorities say capital punishment remains on the books as a dissuasive instrument against terrorist groups that target Cuba.

“I hold the deepest conviction that the ties between the anti- Cuban terrorist groups created in the United States in the first 15 years of the (Cuban) revolution and US authorities have never been broken,” Castro declared earlier this month.

Article 2 of Cuba’s Penal Code, which refers to “crimes against state security,” provides for sanctions ranging from 10 years in prison to the death penalty. The Penal Code also stipulates that death sentences are automatically appealed to the Supreme Court.

In the trial of the three Guatemalans, the court proceedings could run through Saturday, although the sentence would not be handed down until 10 days later.

Guatemala and Cuba reestablished diplomatic ties in January 1998, 36 years after they were broken off.

But tension once again cropped up between the two nations when Guatemala voted in favour last April of a resolution condemning Cuba in the United Nations Human Rights Commission, seen as a response to the delay in the start of the trial of the three Guatemalans.