Testimony stirs emotions at trial of suspected spies

 BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES

 It was 3:23 p.m. on Feb. 24, 1996, and First Officer Bjorn Johansen was on the
 bridge of the cruise ship Majesty of the Seas as it crossed the Straits of Florida
 headed for Miami.

 Suddenly Johansen saw a small explosion in the distance. The fireball was much
 bigger than a flare. Debris fell from the sky, but he couldn't make out what it was.

 He didn't know it then, but what he was seeing was the first of two Brothers to the
 Rescue aircraft being blasted into the sea.

 Johansen's eyewitness account of the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown
 resounded through the courtroom in the Cuban spy trial Tuesday, as relatives of
 the four dead fliers watched and listened in anguished silence.

 Four minutes after the first explosion, Johansen witnessed history a second time.
 Over international waters once again, he saw a Cuban jet fighter tracking a small
 Cessna that was flying north -- away from Cuba. Johansen saw the MiG-29 fire a
 missile. About five seconds later, the missile hit its target.

 ``The [Cessna] plane was consumed by fire and many pieces fell into the sea,''
 testified Johansen, now a captain. ``There were no warning shots. There was no
 other maneuver other than lining up for a direct hit on that plane.''

 Soon the cruise ship passed by the shootdown spot, now marked only by an oil
 slick.

 ``There was not a chance of survival in a situation like that,'' Johansen testified.

 Indeed, there were no survivors. Killed in the downings of two Cessnas were
 Brothers to the Rescue volunteers Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña
 and Armando Alejandre.

 A third plane piloted by Brothers founder José Basulto was not harmed.

 The dead men's remains were never located. Some of their mothers and sisters
 and brothers sit through the trial every day. Some grimace or close their eyes
 during painful testimony.

 Of the five men on trial, only one faces charges related to the shootdowns. He is
 Gerardo Hernández, considered to be one of two spy supervisors.

 Hernández is charged with conspiracy to commit murder for allegedly giving
 Cuban authorities the flight plan of the two Brothers Cessnas while instructing
 other spies to shun the doomed flight. Defense attorney Paul McKenna has said
 the Federal Aviation Administration provided that same flight plan to Cuba.

 On Tuesday, under direct examination by prosecutor John Kastrenakes,
 Johansen estimated that the first Cessna was 20 nautical miles from Cuba and
 the second Cessna 22.8 nautical miles from Cuba when the shootdowns
 occurred.

 That placed both sites well outside the jurisdictional limits of Cuba: 12 nautical
 miles, or 13.8 land miles, Johansen said.

 Havana -- and the defense -- disagree with that assessment, although
 independent investigators for the United Nations reached the same conclusion.

 Johansen said he based his estimates on global positioning satellite read-outs
 and navigational charts that enabled him to fix the position of the Majesty of the
 Seas in comparison to where he saw the explosions. The vessel was 24.5
 nautical miles off the coast of Cuba when the first shootdown took place, he said.

 In June 1996, four investigators for the U.N.'s International Civil Aviation
 Organization (ICAO) concluded that Cuba shot down the Cessna 337 aircraft in
 international airspace and not over Cuban waters, as Havana claims.

 In the Cuban version of events, the MiG pilot and Cuban radar tracks given to
 ICAO claimed that both Brothers planes were heading south, toward Havana,
 when they were shot down.

 The MiG pilot also gave ICAO investigators a detailed account of how he made
 warning passes at the two Cessnas before firing his air-to-air rockets -- coming up
 behind them from the left and then making ``a combat turn'' in front and to the
 right.

 ICAO's report said neither of the downed Cessnas reported seeing such a
 maneuver, ``and it was reasonable to expect that such an encounter would have
 been reported to the other Cessnas.''

 ICAO used the known positions of the Majesty of the Seas and fishing boat
 Tri-Liner, whose crews witnessed the attacks, to locate the incidents at 10.3 to
 11.5 miles outside Cuba's 12-mile limit.