Salvador president brought message to Cuba bomber

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Salvador president brought message to Cuba bomber
By PAUL HAVEN
The Associated Press
Thursday, February 10, 2011; 1:58 PM

http://media3.washingtonpost.com.nyud.net:8090/wp-dyn/content/photo/2011/02/10/PH2011021004017.jpg

Salvadorans Ernesto Cruz Leon, left, and Otto Rene Rodriguez wait to
be interviewed by The Associated Press in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday Feb.
8, 2011. Both are serving time in a Cuban prison for their involvement
in a 1990's bombing campaign against Cuba’s tourism industry.
(AP Photo/Franklin Reyes) (Franklin Reyes - AP)

HAVANA -- A Salvadoran man who spent years on death row in connection with a series of hotel bombings in Cuba says the man who later became his country's president brought him a reassuring message from Fidel Castro: The sentence will never be carried out.

The message came more than a decade ago, when Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes was a reporter for a Salvadoran television channel and interviewed convicted bomber Ernesto Cruz Leon in Havana.

"Funes was here in the year 2000 ... the only journalist from my country who was permitted to come, with the authorization of Fidel Castro," Cruz Leon told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. "He brought me a message from President Fidel Castro himself that he was aware of my cooperation in clarifying these events, and that because of it the death penalty would not be applied, but all I had was his word."

It was not clear if Funes disclosed the message from Fidel as part of his report. A spokesman for the El Salvadoran president, David Rivas, had no immediate comment on Thursday.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/10/AR2011021004006.html