The World - News from Dec. 23, 1986

A Spaniard released after 21 years in a Cuban prison said he partly lost vision in one eye and hearing in one ear as a result of ill-treatment. Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo, 52, once an ally of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, traveled to Spain after being released from prison Sunday. Charging that Castro lied when he asserted that prisoners were not mistreated, he told a news conference in Madrid that several of his ribs were broken in a beating early in his detention. “I was on the verge of losing my life, and when I was taken to a hospital, there was a direct order from Castro not to treat me,” he said. Gutierrez Menoyo was sentenced to death in 1965 on charges of trying to overthrow the government. It was later commuted.