BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES

 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.