Cuba commutes Salvadoran bomber's death sentence

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Cuba commutes Salvadoran bomber's death sentence
The Associated Press
Friday, December 3, 2010; 6:33 PM

HAVANA -- Cuba's Supreme Court has commuted the death sentence of a Salvadoran man convicted of terrorism for a string of hotel bombings in 1997 that killed one tourist.

Ernesto Cruz Leon is to serve 30 years in prison instead, the maximum term allowable under the statute. He has been behind bars for more than a decade already.

The ruling was announced Friday on state-run website Cubadebate.

Cruz Leon confessed to planting bombs in five hotels and a restaurant between July and September 1997 in a plot to scare away tourists and hurt a key source of income for the island.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/03/AR2010120305742.html

---

You may recall this man was recruited by Miami Cuban "exile" former CIA, Contra operative, terorist Luis Posada Carriles.

[Judi Lynn]

1. Cuba mulls Salvadoran's death sentence for terror

Cuba mulls Salvadoran's death sentence for terror
The Associated Press Published: Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 5:54 p.m.
Last Modified: Thursday, December 2, 2010 at 5:54 p.m.

Cuba's Supreme Court has begun reviewing the death sentence of a Salvadoran man convicted of terrorism for a series of hotel bombs in 1997.

Government website Cubadebate said the review of Ernesto Cruz Leon's sentence began Thursday, but it did not give details of the process or a timetable.

Cruz Leon confessed to planting bombs in five Cuban hotels and a restaurant between July and September 1997 in a plot to scare away tourists and hurt a prime source of income for the island. He and fellow Salvadoran Otto Rene Rodriguez were sentenced to death in 1999 for the plot, which killed an Italian tourist and wounded 11 other people, including seven foreigners.

It was allegedly organized and financed by Cuban-Venezuelan Luis Posada Carriles, one of Cuba's most-wanted men. Posada Carriles is also accused in the bombing of a Cuban jetliner and in a series of attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.

More:
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20101202/API/1012022583

[DissedByBush]

3. I can't criticize

He killed people. He deserves to be in jail.

This is quite separate from the political prisoner problem in Cuba. He's no Oscar Biscet.

[Billy Burnett]

7. Why don't you tell us who you think Oscar Biscet is.

Thanks.

:hi:

[DissedByBush]

8. Cuban doctor and human rights activist

Currently serving a 25-year sentence for speaking out for freedom.

You know how we protect people who burn the flag here under freedom of speech?

He once got three years for flying the Cuban flag upside down.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

2. You and I know who are NOT going to post in this thread, don't we? -nt

[dipsydoodle]

5. Mainly those both in the USA and Latin America

who support the US harbouring terrorists like Luis Posada Carriles and seemingly in agreement with imprisoning those innocent such as the Cuban Five.

[DissedByBush]

9. Innocent? Cuba admitted they were spies.

We tend to imprison captured spies.

As far as Carriles, even the Bush justice department tried to keep him in jail as a dangerous person. But it is strange that we're not trying him for Flight 455.

[Judi Lynn]

10. They were NOT spying on the U.S. government, but upon the filthy Cuban exile terrorists

in Hermanos al Rescate ("Brothers to the Rescue") led by former CIA, Cuban terrorist Jose Basulto, who had been buzzing over Cuba, even being witnessed personally by US Intersts Section head, Wayne S. Smith, as he stood on the ground, watching them flying over Havana so low he could even read the numbers below their wings.

Not spying on the U.S. should NOT place them in US federal prisons. This was pure, vicious evil perpetrated by the power of the Cuban "exiles" behind the continual acts of terrorism against Cuba all these long, long years. Everyone knows it.

The first trial was thrown out in the first appeals court which stated that trial had not been righteous, and should have been taken to another city, NOT tried in South Florida among the assholes who were sending the terrorists to Cuba in the first place.

These "spies" were so honest in their work they took their material to the F.B.I. in Miami, expecting the F.B.I. would want to know what they had learned and would go arrest these lumps with Jose Basulto, since it is AGAINST U.S. LAW to conduct war on other countries from U.S. soil.

No, the law is just for chumps, apparently. The F.B.I. ARRESTED these naive, trusting men, and the ####stick terrorists packed the courtroom and shrieked and howled and poisoned any chance of a decent, civll fair trial, while the Miami Herald and local news stations pumped tainted stories out daily.

The 1st Court of Appeal was right, but no, the pigs serving the "exile" faction in Miami kept shopping the trial until they found a court to overturn the appeals court's findings, and these men are simply ruined now, prisoners of the very dirty subhuman wastes the Cubans threw out of Cuba during the revolution, and their cheap, whore allies in the U.S. government.

[DissedByBush]

15. They were caught spying on the government

They got jobs at NAS Key West and reported on activities there to Cuba.

That is spying that gets you thrown in prison.

That's aside from the whole shooting down an unarmed plane issue.

[Judi Lynn]

11. They didn't try to keep him in jail as a dangerous person. the scum is walking free right now,

whooping it up with his fellow scums in Miami. He was tried ONLY for immigration violation problems, as in giving false information to agents when he entered the country.

As for keeping dangerous Cuban "exile" scum in prison, George H. W. Bush, at the behest of his lump son, Jeb, and Jeb's Cuban "exile" ally, Congresswoman "La Loba" (She Wolf) Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, overturned the exclusionary judgement of acting U.S. Attorney General Joe D. Whitley who determined Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles' partner in mass murder bombing, and terrorism, and opted to throw open the doors to this piece of filth over 30 other countries REFUSED to accept when he attempted to slime across their borders.

[DissedByBush]

17. Confusing Bosch with Carriles

Bosch was a classic example of Bush Sr. being paid off by powerful interest groups.

Carilles is free on bail when the Justice Department requested it not be granted.

But I do agree political pressure is probably why he isn't being charged for the airline bombing.

Carilles and Bosch are definitely two people who deserve to be behind bars until they die.

If we really want to get cruel with our punishment, maybe we could send them to a Cuban prison.

[Judi Lynn]

12. Speaking of spies, the U.S. has had people swarming throughout Cuba for decades,

even teams of dirty Cuban "exile" terrorists who boast openly the F.B.I. turns its head when it learns they are headed to Cuba in boats filled with weapons and ammunition, where they openly boast they go ashore and pick off people they hate, have been placing bombs for many years, destroying crops, spreading biological warfare materials, as testified by C.I.A. man, Cuban dirtball "exile" lowlife cheapshot Eduardo Arocena in his N.Y.C. trial. It's a matter of record. He admitted the CIA sent him to carry these deadly materials into Cuba to use against the Cuban population.

Speaking of spies, who the #### were the people who were in Cuba all these years attempting to murder the Cuban President Fidel Castro? Were they NOT US employees? The C.I.A. certainly has that impression:

638 ways to kill CastroThe CIA's outlandish plots to bump off the Cuban dictator would put 007 to shame ... poison pills, toxic cigars and exploding molluscs. Once he even offered to shoot himself, reports Duncan Campbell

Duncan Campbell The Guardian,
Thursday 3 August 2006

For nearly half a century, the CIA and Cuban exiles have been trying to devise ways to assassinate Fidel Castro, who is currently laid low in Cuba following an operation for intestinal bleeding. None of the plots, of course, succeeded, but, then, many of them would probably be rejected as too fanciful for a James Bond novel.
Fabian Escalante, who, for a time, had the job of keeping El Commandante alive, has calculated that there have been a total of 638 attempts on Castro's life. That may sound like a staggeringly high figure, but then the CIA were pretty keen on killing him. As Wayne Smith, former head of the US interests section in Havana, pointed out recently, Cuba had the effect on the US that a full moon has on a werewolf. It seems highly likely that if the CIA had had access to a werewolf, it would have tried smuggling it into the Sierra Maestra at some point over the past 40-odd years.

The most spectacular of the plots against Castro will be examined in a Channel 4 documentary entitled 638 Ways to Kill Castro, as well as in a companion book of the same name written by the now-retired Escalante - a man who, while in his post as head of the Cuban secret service, played a personal part in heading off a number of the plots. While the exploding cigar that was intended to blow up in Castro's face is perhaps the best-known of the attempts on his life, others have been equally bizarre.

Knowing his fascination for scuba-diving off the coast of Cuba, the CIA at one time invested in a large volume of Caribbean molluscs. The idea was to find a shell big enough to contain a lethal quantity of explosives, which would then be painted in colours lurid and bright enough to attract Castro's attention when he was underwater. Documents released under the Clinton administration confirm that this plan was considered but, like many others, did not make it far from the drawing-board. Another aborted plot related to Castro's underwater activities was for a diving-suit to be prepared for him that would be infected with a fungus that would cause a chronic and debilitating skin disease.

One of the reasons there have been so many attempts on his life is that he has been in power for so long. Attempts to kill Castro began almost immediately after the 1959 revolution, which brought him to power. In 1961, when Cuban exiles with the backing of the US government tried to overthrow him in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the aim was to assassinate Fidel and Raul Castro and Che Guevara. Two years later, on the day that President Kennedy was assassinated, an agent who had been given a pen-syringe in Paris was sent to kill Castro, but failed.

More:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2006/aug/03/cuba.duncancampbell2

~~~~~
How many deadly acts have you ever heard were perpetrated against citizens of the U.S. by Cuban nationals, anyway? That's right, NONE.

[DissedByBush]

16. We all have spies

If they are caught, they go to jail, often later traded for our spies the other countries have.

If they're diplomatic they get sent home.

That's how the game has been played for decades.

But because it's Cuba you want to claim some special persecution.

They're spies. They were caught. They're in jail. Cuba doesn't care to trade them back.

Too bad. Get over it.

[Judi Lynn]

19. Wrong. They were not spying on the US government. They were spying on Cuban "exile" terrorist scum.

Therefore, since they were NOT endangering US interests, and that's for damned sure, they should have NEVER been tried and placed in any US prisons.

Furthermore, the US, had it been enforcing its own laws, itself would have thrown these dredges of humanity, these pathetic, fetid, vicious criminals into prison for conducting acts of terrorism against another country from U.S. soil, which is the goddamned LAW.

Period.

The world does NOT revolve around dirty, sleazy, rotten Cuban reactionary right-wing sub-human dirtbags, and in time, if they live several thousand years, they will finally figure that out for themselves.

[DissedByBush]

21. They were caught spying on NAS Key West

They even got jobs there so they could spy.

[Judi Lynn]

27. Where's your reference to actual evidence on that?

Everyone knows they were here to learn how to defend against the filthy, low-life, not fit to live Cuban "exile" dirtbag terrorists who've been terrorizing Cubans for decades. Pieces of #### like ALL the terrorists everyone has heard of all these long, long years.

for image of some of these wastes of skin, click link:
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/photoGallery/index/243297/0/

Some pieces of filth Cuban "exile" commandos
induging their perversity, terrorizing Cubans.
Article accompanying the photo, see:
Spies in Miami, Commandos in Cuba
If you disagree with what they do, why defend their right to do it?
By Kirk Nielsen Thursday, Jul 5 2001

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2001-07-05/news/spies-in-miami-commandos-in-cuba/

[DissedByBush]

29. It's in the court docs

http://www.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/ops/200117176.opn3.pdf

"Among other things, the Wasp Network reported information to Cuba about the operation of military facilities, political and law enforcement activities, and activities of organizations based in the United States who support a change in the regime of Cuba."

As far as their spying on the Brothers, they helped give Castro flight information so he could stop some of these violent terrorists.

They even had a code to make sure they weren't on the flights that day -- hmmm, wonder what was going to happen on the planes on that day?

I mean, dropping excerpts from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on Cuba, how much worse of a violent terrorist can you be?

That's definitely cause to shoot down two unarmed civilian planes, killing four people.

Those who dare expose the people of Cuba to such counter-revolutionary filth deserve to die!

[dipsydoodle]

13. Have you got a link

to Cuba admitting they were spies ?

[DissedByBush]

14. Link

http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=361417&CategoryId=14510

[dipsydoodle]

18. I assume that a joke

and a very poor one at that.

[DissedByBush]

22. I knew it was useless to provide a link

The True Believers will dismiss any evidence contrary to their beliefs.

[boppers]

4. According to the article, he was recruited by somebody else....

'The plot was allegedly organized and financed by Cuban-Venezuelan Luis Posada Carriles, former CIA operative and one of Cuba's most-wanted men, who is also accused in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people and of a series of attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro.

Earlier this year Venezuela captured and extradited to Cuba another Salvadoran suspect in the hotel bombings: Francisco Chavez Abarca, who allegedly recruited Cruz Leon.'

See also:
http://havanajournal.com/politics/entry/cuban_hotel_bomber_interviewed_in_prison/

..which has Abarca as the recruiter, and more back story.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Just saw your post, remembered Abarca is called Posada's right hand man,

and he was in the news earlier this year. We posted articles on him at that time.

Just found this one in a search:

July 2, 2010 / machetera
Luis Posada Carriles’ right hand man, Francisco Chávez Abarca, nabbed in Venezuela

http://1.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_YQxS6O3GxrE/TC6zjf0_N3I/AAAAAAAACY4/8Rlm4p2XW1k/s320/francisco-chavez-abarca.jpg

Potbelly" Francisco Chávez Abarca is on the
Interpol Most Wanted list for his involvement in
various explosive attacks in Cuba in the 1990's

Francisco Chávez Abarca, Posada Carriles’ Right Hand Man, Captured in Venezuela -

~snip~
Chávez Abarca was under arrest in El Salvador for two years for being the leader of a gang dedicated to vehicle theft in that country, but sidestepped sentencing for other international crimes of which he was accused. Chávez Abarca and 21 members of his gang were arrested under charges of automobile theft and swindling. Authorities assured at the time that they were dealing with “one of the main structures of organized crime dedicated to vehicle theft on a national and Central American level.”

On October 28, 2007, a complacent judge freed Chávez Abarca from his criminal charges. However, he never had to answer for his role as the principal accomplice of Luis Posada Carriles. The campaign for his arrest was never mentioned before Salvadoran courts, despite repeated complaints.

In the 1990s, there were indications that he had dedicated himself to drug trafficking as well as arms sales and currency counterfeiting in Guatemala. He used the aliases Manuel González, Roberto Solórzano and William González, and went on three short trips to Cuba in April and May of 1997 to engage in various attacks there. In 1997 he detonated a bomb with 600 grams of C-4 that caused structural damage in the bathrooms of the Aché discotheque in the Hotel Melia Cohiba, on April 12, 1997.

On the 30th of the same month, an explosive device with 401 grams of C-4 that the Salvadoran had put in an ornamental planter on the 15th floor of the same hotel was defused. Furthermore, on May 24th, while Chávez Abarca was in México, a bomb exploded in the offices of the Cubanacán corporation in the capital.

More:
http://machetera.wordpress.com/2010/07/02/luis-posada-carriles-right-hand-man-francisco-chavez-abarca-nabbed-in-venezuela/

http://www2.2space.net.nyud.net:8090/images/upl_newsImage/1278540008.jpg http://1.bp.blogspot.com.nyud.net:8090/_4KtPOPC0zIs/TEHhhE91j1I/AAAAAAAAEt4/5rCGuHopkJg/s400/posada+chavez+a.jpg

[Judi Lynn]

20. Foreign Ministry Explains Controversial "Sexual Orientation" Vote to Activists

Foreign Ministry Explains Controversial "Sexual Orientation" Vote to Activists
By Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Dec 2, 2010 (IPS) - Gay rights advocates in Cuba received an unprecedented response from Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, in a meeting held at the ministry itself, after they complained about this country’s support in the United Nations for an amendment seen as a step backwards from the government’s position against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

"A summary of the conversation will be on my blog in a few hours," journalist and gay activist Francisco Rodríguez Cruz told IPS shortly after emerging from Wednesday’s meeting, which was also attended by Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno.

The reporter, who is better known by the name of his blog, "Paquito el de Cuba", said the meeting "was as unexpected as it was useful and beneficial.

"All of the people taking part in the meeting learned something from it," said the blogger, a member of Cuba’s ruling Communist Party. He is one of the protagonists of what could, without exaggeration, be described as a historic moment: the first formal meeting between a Cuban foreign minister and representatives of this country’s gay community, which has only recently begun to openly organise.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53755

[DissedByBush]

23. Cuba is doing very well in gay rights

At least Castro doesn't send gays to labor camps to "re-educate" them anymore.

[Judi Lynn]

24. Never did, but you know that. n/t

[DissedByBush]

25. Basic facts just fly by you

You have some kind of filter on, don't you?

Anything negative about Latin American dictators and wanna-be dictators just doesn't get absorbed.

Or it must be some right-wing conspiracy.

I guess this one's a gay/lesbian conspiracy since they're the ones who say it.

[Judi Lynn]

26. GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS IN CUBA

GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS IN CUBA

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY CUBA
In common with other countries in the region, the history of the Cuban
gay and lesbian community has been an unhappy one. The revolution of
1959 inherited legislation introduced in 1938 – the Public Ostentation Law -
which imposed a six-month prison sentence (or equivalent fine) on anyone
who “habitually engaged in homosexual acts”, who sexually propositioned
someone or who “created a public scandal” by openly “flaunting his
homosexuality in public”(2). Intellectuals, writers and artists were
associated with homosexuality and therefore found themselves denigrated
by a society characterised by its machista values, cultural backwardness
and adherence to the Roman Catholic Church which viewed same-sex
relationships as a sexual aberration. Socially the subject was considered
taboo.
To make matters worse, illicit gay sex was a component of the
prostitution industry that thrived in Cuba before the Revolution, Cuba being
viewed the biggest off-shore brothel in the Caribbean.

1959 – 1969
Official and public attitudes towards gays and lesbians did not
change with the arrival of the Revolution. In addition to the traditional
machista culture and Catholic values, Cuba’s new ally, the USSR held
equally hostile policies towards gays and lesbians, seeing homosexuality
as a product of the decadent capitalist society prevailing in Cuba in the
1950s. Furthermore, in a society which was the target of increasing
hostility by its close and powerful neighbour, the United States,
culminating in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the Missile Crisis of
1962, the gay community was seen as a threat to the military order.

~snip~
Understandably there were protests against the UMAP camps from all
quarters. In his article ‘The Sexual Politics of Reinaldo Arenas: Fact,
Fiction and the Real Record of the Cuban Revolution’ (3), Jon Hillson
describes how Fidel Castro visited one such camp incognito to experience
the treatment for himself. He was followed by 100 boys from the
Communist Youth whose identity was also kept secret. In 1968, shortly
after these visits, the camps closed.

~snip~
....Cuba is now
considered one of the more open and tolerant societies in the region
towards lesbians and gays.

More:
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/faqdocs/Cuba-sexual-diversity.pdf

(emphasis added)

[DissedByBush]

28. Can you post something not from a Cuban propaganda source?

Even then your source agrees gays were officially persecuted in Cuba, and now Cuba is doing very well in gay rights.

It's right in front of you, but you won't see that Castro persecuted gays.