Batista's thugs abducted, tortured and executed at least 20,000 Cubans during his last days inpower. Most of them knew little to nothing about the revolutionaries. A few were only guilty of sharing their food with the revolutionaries and providing intel.
When the revolutionaries finally got the chance to hold those responsible accountable for their actions, they were equally severe...War is hell.... Also Che knew full what he could expect if captured:
Che Guevara then told his executioner, "I know you've come to kill me. Shoot, coward! You are only going to kill a man!"[194] Terán hesitated, then opened fire with his semiautomatic rifle, hitting Guevara in the arms and legs. Guevara writhed on the ground, apparently biting one of his wrists to avoid crying out. Terán then fired several times again, wounding him fatally in the chest at 1:10 pm according to Rodríguez.[194] In all, Guevara was shot nine times. This included five times in the legs, once in the right shoulder and arm, once in the chest, and finally in the throat... After his execution, Guevara's body was lashed to the landing skids of a helicopter and flown to nearby Vallegrande, where photographs were taken of him lying on a concrete slab in the laundry room of the Nuestra Señora de Malta.[196] Several witnesses were called to confirm that it was Guevara, key amongst them British journalist Richard Gott, the only witness to have met Guevara when he was alive.
Put on public show as hundreds of local residents filed past the body, Guevara's corpse was considered by many to represent a "Christ-like" visage, with some even surreptitiously clipping locks of his hair as divine relics.[197] Such comparisons were further extended when English art critic John Berger, two weeks later upon seeing the post-mortem photographs, observed that they resembled two famous paintings: Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp and Andrea Mantegna's Lamentation over the Dead Christ.[198] There were also four correspondents present when Guevara's body arrived in Vallegrande, including Bjorn Kumm of the Swedish Aftonbladet, who described the scene in an November 11, 1967 exclusive for The New Republic.[199]
A declassified memorandum dated October 11, 1967 to United States President Lyndon B. Johnson from his National Security Advisor Walt Whitman Rostow, called the decision to kill Guevara "stupid" but "understandable from a Bolivian standpoint".[200] After the execution Rodríguez took several of Guevara's personal items—including a Rolex GMT Master wristwatch[201] that he continued to wear many years later—often showing them to reporters during the ensuing years.Today some of these belongings, including his flashlight, are on display at the CIA.[202] After a military doctor amputated his hands, Bolivian army officers transferred Guevara's body to an undisclosed location and refused to reveal whether his remains had been buried or cremated. The hands were preserved in formaldehyde to be sent to Buenos Aires for fingerprint identification. (His fingerprints were on file with the Argentine police.) They were later sent to Cuba.
