Cuban prisoner recounts ordeal 50 years later

72-year-old says he was falsely imprisoned by government for nearly a year

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – A local man who was held prisoner in Cuba for nearly a year shed light Wednesday on the release of another American held in Cuba for five years.

Armondo Gill, 72, was falsely accused of setting a fire in 1961 and said his one year in a Cuban jail was an experience he didn't want to relive.

"There hasn't been one day since February 6, 1965, when I left -- when I said goodbye to my father and mother at the international airport in Havana -- that I have not thought, talked or cried about Cuba," said Gill, who spent 15 years in the Navy.

Gill once called Cuba home, but he left for the United States just three years after he was released from a Cuban prison in 1962. He said authorities targeted then falsely imprisoned him for starting a fire at a sugar mill.

"They picked up a few people who were obviously not followers of his system and they picked me up and they took me to the headquarters in my town," Gill recalled.

Gill said his time in jail was nothing compared to Alan Gross, the American who was released Wednesday after being held by the Cuban government for five years. But Gill did offer some gruesome details of his own experience.

"I would say the room was about the size of this family room. No kitchen, it was 29 of us there. There was no bathroom. There was a hole in the ground," Gill said. "The shower was one piece of pipe coming out of the wall."

Gill said prisoners spent every night hoping they wouldn't be the next one executed.

"At 9 o'clock at night we were scared, because that's the time they'd come to pick up people to take to the prison in the castle across from the bay from Havana, because that's where many people were being shot," Gill said. "(What Gross experienced was) much, much worse. First, because of the amount of time. Second, because they have become more sophisticated as a repressive system."

Gill said because so much time has gone by, he has no way of knowing the specific conditions Gross suffered, but he's just glad to hear he's home.