New York Times
February 24, 1958. p. 3.
Dr. Urrutia,
Castro Aide, Charges Here Persecution of Fighters for Liberty
Dr. Manuel Urrutia Lleo, Cuban exile and the choice of Fidel Castro, the rebel leader, for Provisional President, charged yesterday that the United States “persecutes the Cubans who today fight for liberty.” Dr. Urrutia told a rally here authorities in Miami, Fla., gave an example.
Dr. Urrutia was asked later whether he alluded to a Federal indictment of Dr. Carlos Prio Socarras, former Cuban president, now a Miami resident. Dr. Prio was charged Feb. 13 with having conspired to violate the neutrality laws by preparing military expeditions.
Dr. Uruttia would only say he referred to “all Cubans who fight for liberty.” The Castro and Prio groups are at odds in the fight against the regime of President Fulgencio Batista.
Dr. Urrutia told 900 persons at the Palm Gardens, 306 West Fifty-second Street, that Cubans sought liberty in line with an 1898 resolution by the United States Congress saying Cuba should by right be free. The United States Congress saying Cuba should by right be free. The United States Congress saying Cuba should by right be free. The United States and United Nations, he said, should carry out pledges they have made for human rights.
Recalling that a United States arms embargo had been decreed against the Spanish Republic’s Government during the Spanish Civil War in 1936-39, Dr. Urutia urged a similar embargo against the Cuban regime of General Batista.
He called General Batista “doubly a tyrant—as a usurper of power and because of the abuses and criminal use which he has made of this same power without any justification.”
Dr. Urrutia, a former judge at Santiago, capital of Oriente Province, is now in exile here.
At the rally, Angel Pérez Vidal, secretary in New York of Señor Castro’s Twenty-sixth of July Movement, asserted that the rebels had burned 2,000,000 tons of sugar thus far.
Sugar industry sources in Havana said, in contradiction, that the actual loss from the burnings of cane fields by rebels was too small to affect Cuban sugar production greatly. They estimated that a total of 1,250,000 tons of sugar cane had been burned throughout Cuba, with some of the burned cane being ground immediately, limiting the sugar loss. A total of 1,250,000 tons of sugar cane would produce 190,000 tons of sugar. Cuba’s sugar quota for this year is 5,500,000 tons
Señor Pérez Vidal announced that a new clandestine radio station would be inaugurated in the mountains of eastern Cuba today with Señor Castro speaking on it some time during the day.
Thereafter the station is supposed to go on the air for an hour at 9 P.M. daily, using 1,000 kilowatts to operate on the 20 meter band. Another Castro station has broadcast intermittently from Havana for the last three months, Señor Pérez Vidal said.
Another speaker, Miss Fraces R. Grant, secretary general of the Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom, proposed an Inter-American Court of Human Rights with “social and material sanctions” to quarantine dictators.
Also at the rally was Dr. Mario Llerena, chairman of a committee representing the Castro movement abroad.
The rally marked the anniversary of the declaration of Feb. 24, 1895, launching Cuba’s War of Independence.
Special to The New York
Times
HAVANA, Feb. 23—The transmitting equipment of the Agramonte radio station in the outskirts of the city of Camaguey, in eastern Cuba was destroyed by a bomb late last night. The reports said four masked men entered the building housing the station, ordered a guard outside and placed the bomb under the transformers.