After 22 years Real reason for Cuban General Ochoa's execution

Uploaded by sapper1984 

Division General Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, commander of the Cuban Expeditionary Force in Angola between November 1987 and January this year the man, in other words, sent in to clean up the mess after Unita and the SADF had thrashed the MPLA and its Soviet advisers at Mavinga was executed on charges, principally, of attempting to smuggle cocaine to the US in cahoots with Columbias notorious Medellin cartel. Or so at least the Cuban people and the world have been asked to believe. The transcripts of those sections of Ochoas "trial" that were broadcast on Cuban television, and other evidence, suggest that the truth is rather different. The general
may, tangentially, have been involved in the drug trade, but that was not the reason for his arrest and liquidation.
Ochoa, according to those who knew him (including diplomats involved in the Angola/Namibia settlement process), was
a man of striking countenance and much intelligence and charisma.
He knew his mission was to preside over Cubas last hurrah in Angola and that the "heroic" defence of Cuito was, therefore,
a vainglorious fraud, designed to cover a retreat that had already been decided. The 15 000 new troops who followed
Ochoa came to save Cuban face, not the MPLA. Defence Minister Raul Castro, Fidels brother, quoted the general as saying: "I have been sent to a lost war so that I will be blamed for the defeat." That was, indeed, his view.