Federal Grand Jury Puts Off Trial Of Students Who Planned Cuba Trip

A Brooklyn Federal grand jury has postponed for a year the trial of nine college students--including one from Harvard--indicated for "conspiring to induce and incite others to travel to Cuba." The nine all traveled to Cuba in the summer of 1962 and helped organize another trip the next summer.

Albert Maher '66, who went on both trips, pleaded "not guilty" to the charge on Thursday, before the trial was put off. "We did urge people to go," he said yesterday, "but there was no conspiracy involved."

Maher tried to arouse interest at Harvard last year, when he showed slides of his trip at a meeting of the Socialist Club and urged other students to visit Cuba.

Thursday's postponement was the second, according to Maher. "The judge wants to wait until the Supreme Court has decided on two other cases involving travel to Cuba," he explained.

The cases to which Maher referred concern a Hartford architect and an anthropologist at the University of Pennsylvania. Both have sued the State Department for refusing to grant them permission to visit Cuba.

Recruitment for the first student trip actually began in April, 1962, when Martin Nicholaus, a Brandeis graduate student, placed classified ads in several college newspapers, including the CRIMSON. The ads gave a telephone number for "anyone interested in traveling to Cuba."

The two student groups flew to Cuba by way of Prague, Czechoslovakia. The Cuban Student Federation paid all expenses for the trips "in the interest of promoting accurate reporting of the Cuban situation in the United States."

The students first became interested in visiting the island in October, 1962, shortly after the missile crisis. Thirty students met at Columbia University that month to discuss what they called "the problem of U.S. hostility toward Cuba."

The group blamed "distorted pictures of the true Cuban situation" for the hard feelings, and unanimously agreed that student trips to Cuba would be an important step in reestablishing ties between the two nations.