Maximum penalty for 'patriot'

 BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES

 In front of his mother and his Cuban compatriots, spymaster Gerardo Hernández -- a convicted murderer in the United States but a patriot in his homeland -- was
 sentenced Wednesday to two life terms, the maximum possible punishment and the outcome sought by tearful relatives of four men killed in the 1996 Brothers to the
 Rescue shoot-down.

 U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard meted out the sentence after hearing gruelingly emotional pleas from the Brothers relatives and a 40-minute diatribe from Hernández, 36, a career Cuban intelligence agent who supervised other South Florida-based spies.

 Hernández's speech defiantly condemned his prosecutors, jurors, Brothers' founder José Basulto, U.S. foreign policy and -- most of all -- the Cuban exile community, but acknowledged no guilt for himself.

 Lenard disagreed, finding that despite several ``wrongful and provocative'' violations of Cuban airspace by Brothers, a search-and-rescue group, Cuba's act of blasting two Cessnas from the sky was not a reasonable response and deserved to be fully punished.

 Hernández conspired with his bosses in Havana to murder the fliers, the jury found.

 JUDGE'S COMMENT

 ``What more could they have done?'' Lenard said, repeating a question that Hernández's lawyer, Paul McKenna, posed about the Cuban response. ``They could have brought the planes down and taken those persons into custody.

 ``The actions of the planes in February 1996 were much less extreme than the actions taken by this defendant and others in executing a conspiracy to commit murder,'' she said.

 Fliers Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales perished in the shoot-down over international waters. Their bodies were never recovered -- ``pulverized up in the air,'' Morales' frail mother, Eva Barba, cried to the judge, prompting sniffles around the courtroom.

 NOT A MARTYR

 Michael Méndez, Costa's nephew, told the judge that while some people call his uncle a martyr, he disagrees. The dictionary, he said, defines the word as someone who chooses to die. ``He never chose to die. Mr. Hernández made that choice for him,'' Méndez said.

 Outside the courtroom, relatives of the dead men said they were happy with the sentence and the trial but they hope the government will continue to pursue Cuban
 President Fidel Castro and others who gave orders or fired missiles in the attack.

 ``We have a life sentence of our own,'' said Maggie Khuly, Alejandre's sister. ``We will never stop our fight for justice until every person responsible for the murders'' is held accountable.

 U.S. Attorney Guy Lewis, as is his policy, wouldn't say whether an indictment against Castro is contemplated. But he said Hernández's life sentences send a message to
 other spies that they will be punished if they're caught. The case was prosecuted by Caroline Heck Miller, John Kastrenakes and David Buckner.

 `FAIR TRIAL'

 Two jurors who watched the sentencing also applauded the sentence. Eugene Yagle and David G. Buker said that despite Hernández's assertions to the contrary, he
 received a fair trial.

 Hernández, the most culpable of five spies convicted after a six-month trial that ended in June, was also sentenced to life for espionage conspiracy. Evidence showed that he supervised other spies in their efforts to infiltrate U.S. military bases, to obtain national security secrets and to discredit Cuban exile groups.

 The spies disputed the charges. While they acknowledged they were Cuban intelligence agents, they claimed they were sent to South Florida to protect Cuba from a U.S. attack and from ``extremist'' Cuban exiles believed responsible for hotel bombings in Havana.

 Lenard said Hernández's two life sentences would run concurrently. There is no early release provision under federal rules, meaning Hernández could die behind bars.

 McKenna, Hernández's lawyer, said the life sentence was not unexpected.

 ``With big-league cases you get big-league sentences,'' he said, promising an appeal based on what he called insufficient evidence.

 The chief of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, Dagoberto Rodríguez, said the sentence was ``the result of the thirst for vengeance among the anti-Cuban circles in the United States,'' the Cuban news agency Prensa Latina reported Wednesday night.

 Rodríguez made the comment during an on-the-air telephone conversation with panelists in the Information Round Table, broadcast regularly on Cuban radio and
 television. The spies are a cause celebre on the island.

 CUBAN PRESS

 The Cuban press spent the previous several days preparing the nation for the worst.

 ``Judging by what happened [Tuesday] at the sentencing hearing against Gerardo Hernández, one cannot expect the least sign of benevolence from American justice,'' the Communist Party daily Granma said Wednesday in an article titled ``Mercilessness won't break the morale of Gerardo and his companions.''

 Spy Ramón Labañino is scheduled to be sentenced today and the other three spies in coming days and weeks.

 QUOTING NATHAN HALE

 Hernández, a short, balding man with a goatee, stood erect with his hands clasped behind his back as Lenard pronounced sentence. Minutes earlier, Hernández, a
 captain in the Cuban military, finished his speech by quoting American patriot Nathan Hale: ``I regret I have but one life to give for my country.''

 Roberto González, brother of spy René González, called Hernández's speech ``a marvelous one'' and said ``anyone with intelligence understands the meaning of what he was saying.''

 Hernández's mother, Carmen Nordelo, was flown in from Havana along with the mothers of four other spies to attend the sentencing. They sat on the opposite side of the courtroom from the Brothers' relatives. All declined comment under the careful watch of escorts from the Cuban Interests Section.

 Lenard said she was struck by the tense distance apparent between both sides.

 ``There are many sad ironies in this case,'' Lenard said, reflecting on the loving comments made by relatives of both the shoot-down victims and of Hernández. While
 considering their remarks, she said, ``I thought how much all of these persons come from the same fold, from the same culture, and how far apart they are.''

 Lenard added: ``The distance between Cuba and the United States seems much farther today than the 90 miles that separate the Florida Keys and Havana. Whatever the distance, I'm sure the Florida Straits are filled with the tears of mothers from both the United States and Cuba.''

 FALSE IDENTITY

 Before his arrest in Miami in September 1998, Hernández passed himself off to neighbors in Northeast Miami-Dade as Puerto Rican Manuel Viramontes, a single man with an ex-wife in Mexico. But Hernández actually has been married for 13 years to a woman in Cuba, Adriana Perez.

 Neighbors thought Viramontes was a freelance graphic designer for advertising agencies. His building manager said he saw him working on an ``old lousy computer.''

 It was that computer -- and hundreds of computer diskettes created on it -- that unlocked the key to the spy ring, codenamed La Red Avispa, or the Wasp Network. For unknown reasons, Hernández and some of the other spies kept years worth of coded communications between themselves and their Havana intelligence bosses on computer disks.

 FBI agents secretly copied those disks.

 After the four-year investigation broke, experts were able to break the codes, providing them with thousands of pages of secret intelligence communications -- the road map followed by prosecutors in the case.

 Herald staff writer Tere Figueras and translator Renato Pérez contributed to this report.