On July 26, 1953, he directed approximately 160 men in a suicide attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba hoping to spark a popular uprising. Fidel was arrested and most of the men were killed. After a trial in which he recklessly defended himself, the government sentenced him to 15 years in prison. He and his brother Raúl were eventually released in 1955 under a political amnesty with the Batista government. The two brothers then went to Mexico to carry out their campaign against the Batista regime. Mexico is where Fidel began organizing Cuban exiles into a revolutionary group called July 26th