Published Tuesday, February 6, 2001, in the
Miami Herald
Attorney says Brothers' pilot tested guns to use against Cuba
By Gail Epstein Nieves. gepstein@herald.com
Hammering home the theory that Brothers to the Rescue was abandoning its
humanitarian mission, a defense attorney on Monday got an acknowledgement that
José Basulto -- the group's co-founder -- tested crude homemade shotguns
charged with 12-gauge ammunition.
Lawyer Paul McKenna called the stuffed PVC pipes "anti-personnel
devices'' and contended that they were destined to be air-dropped to Cuban
dissidents by Brothers fliers.
Prosecution witness Arnaldo Iglesias, who tested the flare guns with
Basulto, begged to differ -- but he never offered an alternative explanation for
testing the ammo.
"Isn't it a fact that the intent of the PVC pipes was to drop them into
Cuba so they could be used by Cubans against Castro and his government?''
McKenna asked Iglesias, 62, a close friend of Basulto's and secretary of
Brothers. "Isn't it a fact you were testing something that could be used to
hurt people?''
"No,'' Iglesias said both times, adding, "Brothers to the Rescue
is a peaceful operation only.''
In an interview after the trial Monday, Basulto's lawyer said McKenna was
unfairly twisting facts about the flare guns.
Making Brothers to the Rescue -- and Basulto in particular -- appear
confrontational with Cuba is one of McKenna's main defense strategies in the
Cuban spy trial. Five men are charged with spying for the island nation.
McKenna has said that his client, Gerardo Hernández, is a scapegoat
for Basulto's provocations. Hernández faces a murder conspiracy charge in
connection with the Feb. 24, 1996, Cuban shootdown of two Brothers planes that
killed four Miami men over the Florida Straits.
DARK CLOUDS
Jurors saw the apparent aftermath of the shootdown on a video played in
court Monday. The video, taken by Basulto inside his Cessna while Iglesias
piloted the plane, showed puffy dark clouds of smoke on the horizon. It also
showed a fuzzy large dark object flying by.
McKenna contended that it was a Cuban MiG doing "a pass'' to warn
Iglesias away from Cuba. Iglesias sharply disagreed, saying he had never seen
the object. Perhaps, McKenna asked sarcastically, Iglesias thought it was a
large bird or an unidentified flying object?
Verbal jousting between McKenna and Iglesias made for one of the most
contentious days yet in the ongoing trial. After Iglesias said he couldn't
remember anything about a particular Brothers flight, McKenna asked:
"Do you think you have a memory problem?''
"I might,'' Iglesias responded.
Iglesias said the PVC pipes were charged with flares and initially were
designed to drop to rafters at sea. Once, he said, he and Basulto tested the
pipes with the ammunition.
"The purpose of the operation was to see if it [the pipe] would
withstand the 12-gauge ammunition,'' he said, adding that Basulto told him that
Brothers pilot Juan Pablo Roque -- who later turned out to be a Cuban spy
infiltrator -- had "told him the same device could be used with 20-gauge
ammunition.''
AIMS 'TWISTED'
In a phone call to The Herald, Brothers' lawyer Sofia Powell-Cosio insisted
that McKenna had twisted the group's intentions. She said Basulto made "two
or three'' of the flare guns with the idea of helping rafters mark their spots,
provide shark protection and to kill fish or birds to eat.
"The reason why we never actually used them is because when you tried
to shoot them, they would blow up in your hands,'' said Powell-Cosio, who added
that the group volunteered information about the devices to the FBI in 1996.
She said Roque had encouraged Basulto to use the flare guns in Cuba to burn
sugar cane fields.
Under orders from U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard, Basulto and other
potential witnesses are prohibited from talking with reporters.
On a related matter, Iglesias also acknowledged that he and pilot Alfredo
Sanchez "probably'' violated Cuban airspace during a July 13, 1995,
flotilla. But Iglesias denied McKenna's suggestions that he again violated Cuban
airspace during two leafletting flights in January 1996 -- the month before the
shootdown.
Asked if he violated Cuban airspace on the shootdown day, Iglesias said, "Not
to my knowledge.''
But the Federal Aviation Administration and the U.N.'s International Civil
Aviation Organization (ICAO) both concluded that Basulto's plane penetrated
Cuban airspace -- by 1.7 miles, according to the ICAO.
'SPACE NOT VIOLATED'
Basulto insisted to ICAO that he had not violated Cuban territory on that
flight and that he specifically remembered turning east when he reached latitude
23.23 north, well outside Cuban airspace. Iglesias testified Monday that he had
turned east, not south toward Cuba.
Even though Basulto's was the only one of three Brothers planes to invade
Cuban territory that day, it was the only craft not shot down. No firm
explanation has ever been established for that.
Reno defends protest
By Carol Rosenberg. crosenberg@herald.com
Janet Reno says the protest by 50 or so Cuban Americans outside her Kendall
house this weekend was "a great example of the First Amendment at work.''
Reno, 62, who recently concluded a two-term stint as U.S. attorney general,
is a South Florida native whose parents both worked in the newspaper business.
Her brother is a newspaper columnist as well.
Saturday, two weeks after she returned from Washington, D.C., several dozen
sign-waving protesters showed up outside her home. One placard called her "merciless''
and "selfish.'' Another declared, "Helping Castro is a crime.''
Their gripe: Reno sent federal agents to Little Havana on April 22 to snatch
Cuban shipwreck survivor Elián González from his great-uncle's
home. The 6-year-old child was soon reunited with his father, who returned to
Cuba and an eventual meeting with Fidel Castro.
Asked whether the protest at her home was "hurtful,'' the former Dade
state prosecutor said she prefers more personal contact with people who disagree
with her -- for example, the South Floridian who confronted her in a restaurant
the other day, saying: "How can you deprive that boy of his rights?''
Reno declined to name the restaurant but said she was able to articulate her
side of the debate, which, she said, ended "more than civilly --
amicably.''
"I think anytime someone calls you terrible names you're troubled by
it,'' she said by telephone Monday. "But I think that most of the
Cuban-American community has been quite wonderful,'' whether or not they agreed
with her supervision of the Elián standoff.
One critic, Reno said, told her: "I disagreed with you vehemently --
you hurt me -- but welcome home. I missed you.''
The Democracy Movement's Ramón Saúl Sánchez last month
ruled out demonstrating at Reno's once rural family homestead, which now sits on
an increasingly busy stretch of Kendall's Southwest 88th Street.
Sánchez, who struggled with agents entering the González home
during the pre-dawn raid, told The Herald that protests would distract from
exile efforts to promote a peaceful, democratic transition on the communist
island.
But Miguel Saavedra of the rival Vigilia Mambisa summoned followers to
Saturday's demonstration, which drew about 50 people monitored by 10 Metro-Dade
Police officers.
Reno was home at the time but declined to answer if she would prefer they
not protest:
"I think that if they want to [demonstrate], the First Amendment
permits them to do it -- and the First Amendment is one of the great protections
of government, or of the people, that I know.''
Copyright 2001 Miami Herald | 