Cuba commutes death sentence of rebel exile

HAVANA (Reuters) - A former Cuban exile convicted of killing a man when he returned to the island to try to start a rebellion had his death sentence commuted on Tuesday in the third such decision this month by Cuba's Supreme Court.

The court reduced the sentence of Humberto Eladio Real Suarez to 30 years, said Elizardo Sanchez of the independent Cuban Commission of Human Rights.

Real has been imprisoned since 1994 when he and six other exiles came to Cuba from Florida to organize an armed uprising against the communist-led government.

He was accused of killing a guard and stealing his car before police caught the group, heavily armed with pistols and automatic weapons.

They had been recruited and trained in Florida by a group called the Democratic National Unity Party with the objective of going to Cuba, setting up in the Escambray mountains and launching a guerrilla movement "to destabilize the internal order," according to government website www.cubadebate.cu.

The other would-be guerrillas received lesser sentences.

In early December, the death sentences of Raul Ernesto Cruz Leon and Otto Rene Rodriguez Llerena, two Salvadorans who took part in 1990s hotel bombings in Cuba, were commuted to 30 years.

Sanchez said the commutations are welcomed by the human rights commission "because the tendency of this government for decades has been to be implacable."

Cuba last applied the death penalty in 2003 when three people were executed by firing squad for seizing a boat with the intent of fleeing to Miami.

(Reporting by Rosa Tania Valdes and Jeff Franks; Editing by Todd Eastham)