BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

 The House of Representatives will hold a public hearing late this month on reports
 that a Cuban torturer nicknamed ``Fidel punched and whipped 18 American
 prisoners of war in Vietnam for a year, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said Thursday.

 The hearing will be held Oct. 27 by the House Committee on International
 Relations to update its information on the so-called Cuba Program under which
 the POWs were tortured from mid-1967 to mid-1968.

 Among the half-dozen people expected to testify will be Robert Destatte, a
 Defense Department official who has reported that Vietnamese army officers
 confirmed to him in 1992 that Fidel had been a Cuban official.

 The true identity of Fidel has never been established, although CIA and Defense
 Department documents have identified some half-dozen men as possible
 matches.

 The story of the Cuba Program has been public since Vietnam released the
 POWs in 1973, although more details emerged in 1996 after the Defense
 Department declassified hundreds of documents.

 Ros-Lehtinen, who has met privately with several POWs in recent weeks, said
 she expects ``to investigate the torturing of our soldiers further and try to
 determine the identities of the individuals responsible.

                     Copyright 1999 Miami Herald