MIAMI, USA (AFP): A former CIA agent claims he personally buried leftist revolutionary icon Ernesto "Che" Guevara, and challenged Cuba to allow a DNA test to prove that the remains it interred are Guevara's, The Miami Herald reported Friday.

Miami Cuban emigre Gustavo Villoldo, 71, a veteran of the failed US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion, said he buried Guevara and two colleagues in October 1967 in a pit in Vallegrande, Bolivia, after cutting a lock of the hair of the Argentine-born Cuban revolutionary hero.

The communist Cuban government in 1995 announced it had located Che's remains and returned them to Cuba in 1997 for a pomp- and parade-filled extravaganza, ending in their interment at a mausoleum in Cuba honoring Guevara.

"In the hair, I'm sure there is a sample of Che's DNA, and I'm willing to have it tested and compared against the remains in his tomb in Cuba," Villoldo told the newspaper. While cooperation from Cuba's government or Guevara's relatives seemed unlikely, his claim stirs new debate over the final fate of one of the Cuban Revolution's most recognizable "ambassadors."

Villoldo said he had the exact coordinates of the grave, and would only give them to the Guevara family if they requested them, the report said.

The medic-turned-guerrilla fighter was killed in October 1967 in Bolivia, where he had gone to foment a leftist uprising.

US Central Intelligence Agency operatives and Special Forces advisers helped organize a Bolivian military operation, as a result of which he was captured and executed, according to documents made available later.

But much to the dismay of the Cuban exile community, Guevara's death turned him into a cultural icon.
A world-famous 1960 photograph of Guevara taken by Alberto Korda captured the restless spirit of the long-haired revolutionary after he had helped Fidel Castro topple a pro-US regime in Cuba.

Guevara appears in painter Andy Warhol's artwork, is the subject of countless books, articles and the popular 2004 movie, "The Motorcycle Diaries."