The Hemisphere: End of the Nye Case

Lighter by 30 Ibs. and paste-white after three months in prison, AlanRobert Nye, 32, of Whiting, Ind., this week faced a three-manrevolutionary tribunal in Havana and pleaded not guilty to a charge ofplotting to assassinate Fidel Castro. The Korean war pilot (U.S. Navy)heard the prosecution charge that he was brought to Cuba last Decemberby Dictator Batista’s Chief of Staff, given a telescopic-sighted rifle,sent into the hills to hunt down Castro for $100,000. Nye said that heaccepted the assignment only as a means of joining Castro’s rebel army.The verdict was guilty and the sentence death by firing squad,suspended on condition that Nye leave Cuba. Within hours he flew to NewOrleans, where he commented that he had had about as much chance ofgetting a fair trial as “a snowball in the place made famous by Dante.”