Death and state funeral of Leonid Brezhnev him, twenty minutes before the deposition of the coffin he was asked by the Kremlin custodian Semyon Shornikov to lower the coffin simultaneously with the chime of bells. The funeral was attended by 32 heads of state, 15 heads of government, 14 foreign ministers and four princes. Among the foreign dignitaries to attend the funeral were President and General Secretary Heng Samrin of Kampuchea, Prime Minister Pierre Mauroy of France, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India, President Babrak Karmal of Afghanistan, President Fidel Castro of Cuba, Foreign Minister Huang Hua of China, Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization, First
Babrak Karmal pre-recorded speech to the Afghan people was broadcast via Radio Kabul from Tashkent in the Uzbek SSR (the radio wavelength was changed to that of Kabul), saying: "Today the torture machine of Amin has been smashed, his accomplices – the primitive executioners, usurpers and murderers of tens of thousand of our fellow countrymen – fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, sons and daughters, children and old people ..." Karmal was not in Kabul when the speech was broadcast; he was in Bagram, protected by the KGB. That evening Yuri Andropov, the Chairman of the KGB, congratulated Karmal on his rise to the