Hello and thank you for downloading witness with me Mike Lanchim.

Today we go back to July 1989

when a group of high-ranking Cuban Army officers

was convicted of drug trafficking

in what many observers saw as a show trial put on by the

islands communist government. Four of the men were condemned to death and executed by firing

squad. I've been speaking to the daughter of one of them. It's July the 12th 1989 and Ileana de la Guardia is visiting her father

Colonel Antonio de la Guardia in jail for what will be the very last time.

It was a situation more difficult to be

to be able to the other because... It was far more difficult than on previous visits because we knew by then that it was likely that his death sentence would be carried out.

So my father was very sad and very worried. We spent those

final hours talking about my brothers and sisters, my grandparents. You have to

look after them, he told me. It's going to get much more difficult around here.

But I still told him, no. Perhaps they'll change their minds.

Perhaps someone will intervene on your behalf and overturn the death sentence.

And what did he reply to you?

Inocional.

He didn't say anything.

But Iliana's desperate hope of a last-minute reprieve proved to be in vain.

I can't remember what time I got the news. I think it was the next morning I got a

telegram sent to the house. A telegram? Yes a little paper in the post.

That's how things were done there.

...