Men, including three Miamians, accused of trying to kill Castro

  BY FRANCES ROBLES

  PANAMA CITY - Four Cuban exiles accused of plotting to blow up President Fidel Castro three years ago must stand trial in November on lesser charges, a judge has ruled despite defense arguments that there was no convincing evidence against them.

  The decision, announced near midnight Friday, ended a contentious three-day pre-trial hearing to determine the fates of former fugitive Luis Posada Carriles and Miamians Gaspar Jiménez, Guillermo Novo and Pedro Remón.

  The four long-time anti-Castro activists were arrested here in November 2000, at the start of the 10th Ibero American Summit, when Castro startled the crowd at the conference by announcing that Cuba's most wanted man was in Panama City plotting to kill him. Panamanian police descended on Posada's hotel, capturing the four as the 75-year-old Posada took an afternoon nap.

  POSADA'S BAG

  The investigation later netted José Manuel Hurtado, a local man the men had hired to drive them around. Hurtado told investigators that he found a bag ''Posada always carried'' in the Mitsubishi he had rented. When he went to return it, Posada's hotel was surrounded by police cars.

  Frightened by the ''strange things'' inside the bag -- 33 pounds of C-4 explosives -- he led police to the spot where he, his nephew and a friend had buried it.

  Judge Enrique Paniza ordered Hurtado to face trial as well, although charges against his nephew and neighbor were dismissed.

  ''I was so surprised,'' said Rosa Mancilla, attorney for the Cuban defendants. ``These charges are contradictory. You either believe Hurtado or you don't. If you believe him, then the charges -- at least against him -- should have been dismissed.''

  ''There's no case there,'' Mancilla said. ``We proved that.''

  The defense said the Cuban exiles sneaked into Panama from Costa Rica, some of them with false documents, to help a high-ranking Cuban intelligence official defect.

  Prosecutors found the tale of espionage implausible, as none of the Cubans could offer evidence that they knew the defector or the supposed escape plan. And what were they doing with a global positioning device and a hand-written essay dubbed ''Operation David v. Goliath?'' prosecutor Arquimedes Sáez asked.

  Sáez acknowledges he can only put the explosives in Hurtado's hands, but the humble chauffeur he called ''the little black Panamanian'' is not the one with a decades-long history of using deadly force against Cuba's communist government.

  Posada was acquitted of the 1976 bombing of a Cubana de Aviación flight to Havana. He escaped from a Venezuelan prison in 1985 while awaiting the prosecution's appeal. The former CIA operative acknowledged and later denied bankrolling the string of 1997 Havana hotel bombings that killed a tourist.

  Remón served time in connection with the murder of a Cuban United Nations official 20 years ago. Novo was acquitted of conspiracy, but convicted of perjury, in the killing of a Chilean diplomat in Washington, and Jiménez was convicted of the attempted kidnapping of a Cuban diplomat in Mexico, whose bodyguard was killed.

  ''Their histories speak for themselves,'' Sáez said.

  The defendants' cause in Panama was hurt by the words of a friend and former co-defendant José ''Pepe El Cubano'' Valladares, a Cuban exile here who allegedly helped hatch the plot.

  ''I told them they should have used a rifle with a telescopic lens,'' Valladares allegedly told investigators. ``Then they would not be in this mess.''

  Valladares died last year.

  At one point Friday, defendant Novo was so tired of hearing himself cast as a ''terrorist delinquent'' that he leapt from his seat and told a lawyer: ``The only delinquent criminal here is you!''

  TRIAL NEXT MONTH

  The men face seven years in prison for possession of explosives, threatening public safety and illicit association. Novo and Posada are also charged with carrying false documents.

  The attempted murder charges were dismissed earlier, because investigators never found the detonating devices for the explosives.

  A trial date was set for Nov. 12. Requests to extradite the men to Cuba and Venezuela were previously denied by the Panamanian government.

  ''My freedom is coming soon, with the will of the people and the help of God,'' Posada said Monday in an interview with The Herald. ``There is no proof against me.''