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Cuban bombings reportedly carried out by Salvadorans
Bombers hired by Cuban exiles, paper says
November 16, 1997
Web posted at: 3:24 p.m. EST (2024 GMT)MIAMI (CNN) -- Sources have told CNN that a spate of bombings this spring and summer in Cuba was the work of a ring of "low-level criminals" from El Salvador, using explosives that may have been smuggled from El Salvador through Caribbean islands.
Those responsible for the bombings were trained in El Salvador, by an unknown Salvadoran individual or group, the sources told CNN.
Cuban police arrested Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, a Salvadoran citizen, in September and charged him with six of the 11 bomb attacks at tourist hotels and a restaurant between April 12 and September 4. Those bombings left one Italian tourist dead and injured several people. Cruz confessed on Cuban TV, saying that he acted alone.
Sunday's Miami Herald reports the bomb plot was carried out by Cruz and three other Salvadoran car thieves and armed robbers. Their leader, according to the Herald, was Francisco Chavez, the son of an arms dealer with close ties to Cuban exile groups. The report says the bombings were paid for with at least $15,000 raised from Cuban exiles in South Florida. The money was contributed by various individuals rather than one single group, the report said.
The Herald also reports that airline records show Chavez had tickets that would have put him in Cuba at the time of the blasts, although the paper could not confirm that he had followed the travel schedule.
According to the Herald, Chavez, Cruz Leon and friends Jose Ramirez and Victor Palma were recruited by Luis Posada Carriles, an explosives expert with a history of organizing anti-Castro guerrilla operations. Posada "was the political, financial and thinking head on this (operation)," the Herald quoted a source as saying.
It was Posada, the Herald says, who hired a Cuban exile to train the recruits for their bombing mission. The exile is described as a marksman and pistol expert.
The Herald reports that the group may have been linked through a friendship between Posada and Chavez' father, an arms dealer who was close to senior Salvadoran army officials in the 1980s.
Posada was charged and twice found innocent in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people. He spent nine years in jail in Venezuela before escaping to El Salvador in 1985. The Herald report says Posada became friendly with Salvadoran army commanders and played a role in that country's civil war, as well as helping contra guerrillas in neighboring Nicaragua.
Related stories:
- Accused Cuban bomber calmly confesses on TV - September 16, 1997
- Cuba says it has arrested man responsible for bombings - September 10, 1997
- Explosions hit 3 hotels in Havana, killing 1 - September 4, 1997
- Cuba edgy after bombings - July 23, 1997
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