Salvadoran admits to bombings

By JUAN O. TAMAYO
Herald Staff Writer

HAVANA -- A Salvadoran man accused of six terror bombings in Havana confessed at the start of his trial Monday but denied any links to the Cuban American National Foundation or a notorious exile bomber.

Prosecutors who have vowed they will prove CANF was behind the blasts opened Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon's trial with an unusually detailed and public presentation by forensic experts using computers, videos and laser pointers.

Drawing admiring murmurs from the audience, one ``odorologist'' even testified that a police dog had matched scent swabs from Cruz Leon and the armrest of a hotel lobby couch where he left one of his bombs in 1997.

The prosecution's presentation appeared designed less to win an already all-but-certain conviction than to demonstrate that terror attacks have forced the Cuban government to adopt harsh measures at home, such as the new laws on dissent that sparked worldwide condemnations last month.

Cuba's Foreign Ministry invited all foreign diplomats based in Havana to attend the trial and issued visas to scores of Salvadoran, Guatemalan and U.S. journalists to enter the courtroom and report on the proceedings.

The publicity was in sharp contrast to the trial last week of four leading dissidents, when officials banned journalists and diplomats from the 12-hour trial. The court has yet to rule in that trial.

Signaling the importance that Cuba gives to the Cruz Leon case, the government named Deputy Attorney General Rafael Pino as prosecutor and moved the trial from a downtown courtroom to a hall in La Cabaña, a notorious 18th-Century fortress overlooking the Havana harbor.

Spanish troops executed dozens of Cuban independence fighters there, and during President Fidel Castro's early years in power its ramparts became the backstop for hundreds of firing squad executions -- the infamous paredon.

Prosecutors have asked for the death penalty by firing squad for Cruz Leon, 27, accused in six of the dozen or so bombings that racked tourist hotels and restaurants in Havana and the resort city of Varadero in 1997.

Contrite mercenary

Cruz Leon opened the trial by confessing to the blasts but portraying himself as a contrite mercenary who was deeply in dept when a Salvadoran friend, Francisco Chavez, offered him $14,400 to carry out the bombings.

``I have no links with the foundation,'' he said, repeatedly trying to avoid the image of a politically motivated terrorist. ``If behind Chavez . . . was hiding the Miami ultra-right, I didn't know that.''

Cruz Leon also said he had no contacts with any Cubans on the island and had never met Luis Posada Carriles, the Salvador-based Cuban exile who has repeatedly claimed that he was the mastermind behind Chavez and the bombs.

``If I am sentenced to death, I will forgive this court . . . but I don't believe it will stop terrorism, because there are unscrupulous and rich people out there who are already creating other Cruz Leons,'' he added.

CANF officials have denied any part in the bombings. Posada told The New York Times last year that the late CANF Chairman Jorge Mas Canosa had ``personally'' financed his attacks on Cuba, but later recanted his tale.

Cruz Leon said he initially believed that a business row among hotel owners was behind his recruitment to bomb the Nacional, Capri, Triton, Chateau Miramar and Copacabana hotels and the famous Bodeguita del Medio restaurant.

`I am sorry'

The blasts killed one Italian tourist and wounded four Mexicans, two Chileans and one Jamaican before he was arrested Sept. 4, 1997. ``My hands are stained with innocent blood,'' Cruz Leon said in his 25-minute speech. ``I am not innocent, but I am sorry.''

Although Posada Carriles has claimed from his hideout in El Salvador that the bombs were designed to sow terror among foreign tourists who are Cuba's largest single source of hard-currency income, the bombs also sparked a wave of anxiety among Cubans who speculated that the bombers had to have some cooperation from top government security officials.

Cruz Leon said Monday that he acted alone and never contacted any Cuban dissidents on the island.

Prosecutor Pino did not challenge Cruz Leon's denial of links with CANF or Posada, even though he insisted during a briefing for journalists Saturday that the trial would ``conclusively prove'' CANF's responsibility.

Instead, he asked Cruz Leon a few questions and swiftly moved on to calling forensic experts from a list of some 40 witnesses expected to testify before the court, made up of three judges and two lay people.

Parade of experts

Wearing white lab coats, a parade of experts from the Interior Ministry's Central Criminal Laboratory testified that there had been six blasts in 1997, that they were caused by bombs and that the explosives used were powerful enough to cause significant damage.

One declared that traces of the plastic explosive known as C-4 had been found in Cruz Leon's shoes, backpack, radio and the strong box in his downtown Havana hotel.

Another testified that a screwdriver found among the defendant's possessions had been filed down to fit precisely the tiny screws of the Casio pocket calculators that were used to set off the bombs.

One intriguing gap in the prosecution's presentations was the lack of an explanation for why a police patrol car had stopped Cruz Leon's taxi Sept. 4 in Havana. He was first taken to an immigration office, the prosecutor said, and only later confessed to state security agents.

Cruz Leon's attorney, Daniel Rippe, who appeared to be in his early 30s, asked few questions of the witnesses. The defendant's mother, Esther, sat on the first row behind her son but declined comment after the opening session.

Officials said this trial will be followed next Monday by a trial for another Salvadoran, Otto Rene Rodriguez Llerena, arrested last June as part of the bombing ring.

Three Guatemalans awaiting trial on the same charges have the best evidence of participation by senior CANF officials in the Posada Carriles bombing campaign, Cuban security officials have said in the past.