BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES

 A defense attorney in the Cuban spy trial said Wednesday that Cuba recovered a black video-camera bag 9.3 miles off the Havana coast about 18 hours after the Brothers
 to the Rescue shoot-down, and he will try to show that the bag came from the Cessna airplane of downed Brothers pilot Mario de la Peña.

 Lawyer Paul McKenna said he will use the spot where the bag reportedly was found as evidence that the two Brothers planes attacked by Cuban MiG fighters on Feb. 24,
 1996, had strayed into Cuban airspace -- a major point of contention between the defense and the government.

 To make his case, McKenna will head back to Cuba, accompanied by government lawyers.

 U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard granted McKenna's request to take videotaped testimony later this week from three Cuban government employees who did work related to
 the shoot-down.

 Over prosecutors' objections, the judge said ``the interests of justice and due process'' required the trip, the second joint government-defense excursion in the case.
 Discussion of the bag and the trip took place outside the jury's presence.

 Traveling to Cuba is necessary because the witnesses say they are afraid and unwilling to come to Miami to testify. Jurors have seen at least four Cuban witnesses testify
 via videotape; only one Cuban has been allowed to testify in person.

 McKenna said the latest witnesses and evidence were only recently made available to him, because ``despite public perceptions'' otherwise, getting cooperation from the
 Cuban government has been a long and often fruitless task.

 But the chief prosecutor in the case, Assistant U.S. Attorney Caroline Heck Miller, accused the Cuban government of trying to manipulate the lengthy trial.

 McKenna's client, Gerardo Hernández, is charged with conspiring with Cuba to murder the four Miami men who died in the Brothers attack. He is among five men accused
 of spying for Cuba.

 The black bag found at sea contained a video-camera charger and two English-language aviation charts.

 In addition to the Border Patrol agent who found the video bag, McKenna plans to take testimony from the radar operator who tracked the Brothers airplanes and plotted
 their courses from his post in Matanzas, Cuba.

 A third witness, an oceanographer, studied currents in the waters north of Havana and concluded that the video bag drifted from the southwest, which McKenna said
 coincides with the location of de la Peña's aircraft.

 The videotaped testimony probably would conclude the defense presentation in the five-month trial.

                                    © 2001