CUBANS MOURN 160 DEAD

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28792, 13 January 1959, Page 9

CUBANS MOURN 160 DEAD

Batista Victims In Mass Grave

< NZ - Press Association—Copyright) (Rec. 9 p.m.) CHICAGO, January 12. The mutilated bodies of 160 anti-Batista political prisoners were found yesterday in a mass grave on the outskirts of San Cristobal, 60 miles west of Havana, a “Chicago Tribune correspondent, Jules Dubois reported.

In a dispatch from Havana, Dubois said most of the victims of the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista were natives of San Cristobal, a city in Pinar Del Rio province.

The population of the city was reported to have gone to the churches in a state of emotion and distress upon learning the news, Dubois wrote

He said the discovery of the common grave came while some leaders of the overthrown Batista regime were being tried and sentenced to death

Dubois said the last man to face a firing squad was Colonel Sergio Alsocaray, the police chief of Verado and Cardenas.

He was convicted by a summary court martial yesterday, Dubois reported, and executed in the police station courtyard. Dubois reported that on December 28 Alsocaray summarily executed three youths accused of being supporters of the rebel leader Fidel Castro.

Dubois said a summary court would open hearings tomorrow in La Cabana fortress with Major General Eulogio Cantillo heading the list of prisoners to be tried. Cantillo was formerly commander of Santiago de Cuba. He took over the Army when Batista fled, and Castro has accused him of “double dealing.” Dubois said Castro had visited the plant and ofiices of the magazine “Bohemia.” Its publisher, Miguel Angel Quevedo, had reported Castro as saying: “I am going to be a sincere friend of the United States, but not its servant.” Dubois also said “Bohemia” was reported to have precipitated the resignation of Earl E. T. Smith as the United States Ambassador to Cuba.

The magazine would not appear on news stands until tomorrow, Dubois said. But he added that Mr Smith was said to have learned that it would publish an article demanding his recall. He cabled his resignation to the State Department.