On March 23, a Salvadoran man, Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon,...

On March 23, a Salvadoran man, Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon, who confessed earlier in March in Havana's Provincial Tribunal, was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to death for a string of 1997 bombings in hotels and a restaurant, which killed an Italian tourist, Fabio Di Celmo, and wounded 11 people. The prosecutor called for the death penalty on February 22. Throughout the trial, Cuba's state prosecution maintained Cruz was recruited and funded by agents working for a powerful Cuban exile group, the Cuban American National Foundation (CANF), which is based in the United States and is fiercely opposed to Fidel Castro's government. The CANF, which has considerable political clout in the United States, had repeatedly denied that it sponsors violence against Cuba. "I want to make public my absolute repentance and repulsion for these acts," Cruz, dressed in a gray-blue prison uniform, and choking on his words several times, told the court when the charges against him were read. After the sentence, San Salvador's archbishop, Fernando Saenz Lacalle, immediately sent a letter to Cuban President Fidel Castro asking that the man's life be spared. The sentence was appealed automatically to the Supreme Tribunal, and must then be ratified by Cuba's ruling Council of State.