Accounts help book project

 BY FRANK DAVIES

 NEW YORK -- One by one, the women in black stood up Thursday, four blocks
 from where Fidel Castro is staying.

 In English and Spanish, they told their stories: families harassed for speaking out
 against Castro's government, relatives beaten and neglected in prison, young men
 whose bodies were never recovered.

 ``The most terrible pain is not knowing, never being able to bury a son,'' said
 Georgina Shelton, whose aunt died in Miami recently. Cuban officials never told
 Rosa Shelton what happened to her son during the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.

 The Cuban exile women, representing a coalition of groups, recounted many more
 recent cases. Vicky Ruíz Labrit, a dissident allowed to leave Cuba last year,
 faced numerous arrests and reprisals against her family.

 ``I have come here to New York to raise my voice -- people need to know these
 things,'' said Ruíz, who now lives in Miami with her two children.

 While the 30 women from Miami and the New York area came to the Helmsley
 Palace Hotel to put a human face on abuses in Cuba, an economist in Maryland
 said he is nearing completion on a book that documents executions and killings
 in Cuba since Castro took power in 1959.

 Using old news accounts, U.S. and Organization of American States records and
 family histories, Armando Lago believes that the Castro government has executed
 from 15,000 to 18,000 people. That includes about 4,000 killed by firing squads in
 the first three years of the revolution.

 Case by case, Lago said he has also documented 500 killed by prison guards,
 about 500 who died from medical neglect, almost 200 suicides of political
 prisoners and more than 1,000 assassinations and disappearances.

 ``I dont accept hearsay accounts,'' Lago said. ``Some in Miami may not like this
 because I have found errors and duplications in past accounts.''

 A leader of Amnesty International, a major human rights group, said verifying such
 totals is very difficult.

 ``We are aware of at least 13 executions last year, and we believe there are
 several hundred political prisoners now,'' said William Schulz, Amnestys
 executive director, on Thursday.

 ``Harassment of dissidents continues, and restrictions on them have gotten
 worse.''

 Ivonne Conde, an organizer of the Coalition of Cuban-American Women in New
 York, said that exile groups have to do a better job publicizing the toll of abuses
 under Castros rule.

 ``Weve heard a lot about [Augusto] Pinochet, and the 3,000 deaths that were
 verified,'' Conde said.