CUBAN ARMY COMMANDER

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 29055, 18 November 1959, Page 24

CUBAN ARMY COMMANDER

Nurse Says She Gave Man Blood Press Association— Copyright) MIAMI, November 15. An American nurse claimed today that she gave a blood transfusion on November 5 to the missing Cuban Army Commander Camilo Cienfuegos as he lay unconscious and apparently dying in a military camp near Havana, according to the “Miami News.” .The Cuban Government has claimed that Major Cienfuegos, a close friend of the Cuban Prime Minister (Dr. Fidel Castro) disappeared on a flight in a small plane on -October 28. Dr. Castro personally led large searches in the Cuban wilderness for Major Cienfuegos. The nurse, Mrs Vani Maris, aged 39, said she was a personal friend of Major Cienfuegos and that she recognised him immediately when she saw him in the hospital. She showed reporters a receipt for SQO c.c. of blood for Major Cienfuegos signed by the director of the blood bank. Mrs Maris said the transfusion took 30 minutes. Then, she said, she asked for and received a receipt to show that she had given the blood. The receipt was typed on the letter head of the Administrator of the National Defence Army and signed by the director of the blood bank. It specified that the blood was for Major Cienfuegos. Mrs Maris said she had heard nothing about Major Cienfuegos since. But she presumed that he died sometime after the transfusion because of his seemingly critical condition. Last Wednesday, Mrs Maris said, an armed officer came to her flat in Havana with an official request that she leave by plane for Key West, Florida, by noon that day. She did as she was ordered and arrived in Miami that afternoon.