Mercenary Held In Cuba Bombings; U.S. Exiles Blamed Salvadoran Confesses; Passport Points To A Connection With Right-Wing Faction
Cuban authorities said Wednesday they have arrested a Salvadoran mercenary who confessed to six of the bombings that have racked Havana recently. They charged that the attacks - one of them fatal - were part of a campaign “mounted” by the Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation.
Foundation President Francisco “Pepe” Hernandez in Miami denied the accusation.
“The foundation had absolutely nothing to do with those events,” he said. “This accusation is not worthy of a serious response. During the 17 years of its existence, the foundation has always used legal methods to get rid of (Cuban President) Fidel Castro.”
The Cuban Interior Ministry made the accusation in a communique broadcast Wednesday night. It said two men of Cuban descent who infiltrated Cuba with explosives and fake Costa Rican passports were arrested last year in what appears to have been part of the same campaign.
The communique said the most recent suspect carried a passport in the name of Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon. It said he is a U.S.-trained Salvadoran army veteran who was paid $4,500 for each of the bombs he placed.
The announcement seemed to bolster Havana’s charge that the 12 bombings or attempted bombings reported in Cuba since April were the work of exiles abroad, but it provided no evidence to back up its claims.
The suspect’s Salvadoran passport points to a possible connection between right-wing Salvadorans who fought against a Cuban-backed insurgency in their country in the 1980s and Cuban exiles who helped the Salvadoran rightists.
Cruz Leon was arrested soon after he placed the last of four bombs last Thursday in three Havana hotels and a restaurant. The first of the day’s bombs killed an Italian-Canadian businessman, the announcement said.
The suspect, who last entered Cuba on Aug. 31 on a flight from Guatemala with a tourist visa, confessed to those four bombs and two others that rocked the Nacional and Capri Hotels on July 12, the statement added.
The communique, read on Havana television’s main news broadcast, said traces of explosives, a sketch of an explosive device, a tourist map and some clothes were found in a backpack the man carried.
He admitted he had used C-4, a plastic explosive, for the bombs, and called himself a “daring adventurer” whose only motivation was money and who received training, equipment, a list of targets and money from people abroad, the communique said.
It said Cruz Leon’s arrest “shows the campaign mounted from Miami by a subversive structure under orders of the CANF and counterrevolutionary chieftain Jorge Mas Canosa.”
But it gave no further details on the Miami connection.