A former CIA operative and three other men are sentenced to prison for endangering public safety after being found guilty in a plot to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

BY FRANCES ROBLES

A Panamanian judge Tuesday convicted four Cuban exiles in a plot to kill Cuban President Fidel Castro and sentenced the oldest -- 76-year-old Luis Posada Carrilles -- to the maximum sentence of eight years.

Caught in Panama City with a fake passport and 33 pounds of explosives, Posada and the three others were found guilty of endangering public safety after 3 ½ years in jail.

Codefendants Pedro Remón and Guillermo Novo, both of Miami, were sentenced to seven years, Remón told The Herald by telephone from prison. Posada and Gaspar Jiménez, also of Miami, received an extra year each for using false passports to enter Panama in November 2000, just before Castro was to visit the Ibero-American summit.

The defendants will all get credit for time served.

''The judge was severe,'' said Miami developer Santiago Alvarez, a friend of the four defendants who helped coordinate their defense. ``All the evidence pointed toward an acquittal.''

The men were alleged to have smuggled explosives into Panama with the intent of blowing up a university center where Castro was scheduled to speak.

But attempted murder charges were dropped shortly after their arrests because police never found detonator caps. The men were acquitted of charges of possession of explosives, The Associated Press reported.

The men claimed they were in Panama to help a high-ranking Cuban military officer defect, and said the explosives were planted by Castro agents.

Reached by telephone, defense attorney Rogelio Cruz declined to comment, saying a news conference is planned for today in Panama.

Alvarez said a notice of appeal had already been filed with the courts, arguing that the stiff sentences were based on the premise that the men were going to kill Castro -- despite the fact that attempted murder charges had already been dropped.

''The defense was based on fact, and the sentence on rhetoric,'' Alvarez said.

Posada's career as an anti-Castro activist was as colorful as it was controversial: he was accused of blowing up a 1976 Cubana de Aviación flight that killed 73 passengers, which he denied; working with the CIA, which he admits; and bombing Havana hotels in 1997, which he has admitted and denied.

He escaped from a Venezuela prison after he was acquitted for the airplane bombing but was awaiting a new trial. After 15 years as a fugitive, mostly in El Salvador, he was caught in Panama, where Cuban security agents had been following his trail.

The explosives for the alleged assassination plot were discovered by a Panamanian driver the men had hired, who told police he found it in their car and hid it. The driver was sentenced to four years but should be released soon, The AP reported.

The defendants are remnants of an era of Miami history when bombs and assassinations were considered the way to topple Castro.

In February 1986, Remón was sentenced to 10 years for the attempted murder of Cuba's delegate to the United Nations. Novo was convicted in the 1976 murder of a former Chilean diplomat, but it was overturned on appeal.

Jiménez served time for an attempted kidnapping and murder of Cuban diplomats in Mexico, and was indicted -- though charges were dismissed -- in the 1976 bombing that wounded late Miami newsman Emilio Milián.