Assault Charge Trial Set for Tomorrow

A hearing will be held tomorrow on a charge of assault brought by Martain Nicolaus, a Brandeis student who traveled to Cuba last summer, against Carlos Alfonso Prado, a Cuban refugee and a member of the anti-Castro "30th of November Revolutionary Movement."

The charge stems from a scuffle between Prado and Nicolaus which occured after a Jan. 16 meeting of the Harvard-Radcliffe Socialist Culb at 2 Divinity Ave.

Nicolaus, who had addressed a previous meeting of the club concerning his Cuban trip, left the meeting early and met Prado in the lobby. There were several versions of the fight which ensued.

Seven of the ten eyewitnesses held that Nicolaus had struck Prado first. These included Jose Martines, chairman of the Revolutionary Movement; two undergraduates, James J. Gaffney '64 and William N. Rudman '85; another Cuban; and three girls from local colleges who were dates of students who had come to the meeting with Rudman and Gaffney.

On Nicolans side were Victoria Ortis, a Barnard student who made the trip to Cuba with Nicolans last summer, and two other students who asked that their names be withheld. These two students, along with Rogello Reyes, teaching fallow in Linguistics, intimated that Gaffney had not entered the lobby until after the incident.

Neither Nicolas nor Prado could be reached for comment last night.

The hearing will be in the Middlesex County Third District Court in Cambridge at 9:15 a.m. tomorrow.