President Fidel Castro said yesterday that four Cuban exiles accused in Panama of plotting to assassinate him would not be executed if they were extradited for trial in Havana.
The Cuban leader gave the public assurance to counter what he said was intense US government pressure to prevent the four, who include at least three US citizens, from being sent to Cuba, where they are wanted for "terrorism" offences.
"If they were tried here [in Cuba]. . . they would receive neither the capital sentence nor prison sanctions of more than 20 years," Dr Castro said after arriving home from Mexico.
Cuba last week formally asked Panama to extradite the four anti-Castro exiles, who were detained in Panama City on November 17th, after Dr Castro himself denounced an alleged plot by them to kill him during a weekend summit of Ibero-American leaders.
Cuba has also offered to allow the four to be tried in Havana by an international tribunal.
The detained men include Mr Luis Posada Carriles, an anticommunist militant accused by Havana of decades of violent actions against Cuba, including a 1976 aircraft bombing that killed 73 people and 1977 bomb attacks against Cuban hotels.
The other three named by Cuba, whom Havana identified as US citizens, are Pedro Remon Rodriguez, Guillermo Novo Sampoll and Gaspar Jimenez Escobedo.
Under Cuba's own domestic penal code, crimes of terrorism are punishable by death, and two Salvadoran nationals are currently held in a Cuban jail under sentence of death for their part in the 1997 hotel bombings on the island.