The Miami Herald
December 8, 1969

Cuba Executes 4 Sent on Sabotage Mission

By FRANK SOLER

The Cuban government Sunday executed four exile saboteurs who had been captured shortly after slipping into the island earlier this year.

The surprise announcement in a Havana Radio broadcast said three others were sentenced to 20 years imprisonment by a "revolutionary tribunal."

The broadcast was monitored in Miami.

The seven exiles were part of a 10-man raiding party sent into Cuba last May by the Cuban Representation in Exile (RECE), a Miami-based activist organization.

The infiltrators' mission was to sabotage electrical, industrial and communications facilities in Cuba's easternmost Oriente Province.

They reportedly were equipped with explosives, arms and ammunition.

The group was surprised by Castroite troops shortly after landing from three rubber rafts near the city of Guantanamo May 3. Three of the exiles were immediately killed and the rest captured.

Their arrest was not announced by the Fidel Castro regime until Mid-October, allegedly because other infiltrators remained at large.

Among those executed Sunday was the expedition's leader, a mysterious exile named Amancio Mosqueda.

Known as "El Yarey" among his followers, Mosqueda was virtually an unknown outside the community who had earned the reputation of a "patriot who got things done."

Also executed were Angel Luis Castillo Cabrera, Francisco Cid Crespon and Manuel Rodriguez Pineda.

Those sentenced to 20 years imprisonment were Yarey's brother, Sixto Mosqueda, Carlos Ramon Ibarra and Tito Lopez Gomez.

Relatives of those executed were reported in seclusion here late Sunday and unavailable for comment.

They included Yarey's wife and two young daughters, Cid's mother and Castillo's wife of only a few months.

A spokesman for RECE Sunday night said the organization will issue a communique condemning the executions as "brutal crimes."