Emotions rise as victims' names read

 BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES

 Sitting in the witness stand, Arnaldo Iglesias paused, choked back tears and
 slowly read aloud from four death certificates:

 Carlos Alberto Costa, 29.

 Pablo Morales, 29.

 Mario de la Peña, 24.

 Armando Alejandre, 45.

 All four men were Brothers to the Rescue fliers who perished in columns of
 smoke over the Florida Straits, as Iglesias watched from the window of another
 Cessna on that day of the fatal shoot down, Feb. 24, 1996.

 Friday was the Cuban spy trial's most emotional session yet. From each death
 certificate, Iglesias read with a husky voice the added clerical notation: ``Body
 destroyed by explosion from missile fired by Cuban MiG and not recovered.''

 ``Did you ever see Carlos Costa again?'' prosecutor John Kastrenakes asked
 Iglesias.

 Kastrenakes pressed on: Did you ever again see Pablo Morales? Mario de la
 Peña? Armando Alejandre?

 ``No,'' Iglesias answered four times, hushing the courtroom into silence.

 Iglesias, 62, a data administrator for La Liga Contra El Cancer, the League
 Against Cancer, bent over in the witness box and wiped his eyes. His wife Mirta
 cried silently in the audience. Relatives of the slain men sat stone-faced but later,
 in an elevator, Costa's mother's eyes filled with tears.

 Iglesias testified that he flew as an observer on more than 100 search-and-rescue
 flights starting in the early 1990s and eventually became secretary of Brothers to
 the Rescue.

 By early 1996, after rafter traffic had slowed to a trickle, Iglesias and the Brothers
 co-founders -- José Basulto and Billy Schuss -- developed plans to drop
 human-rights leaflets onto Cuba from international airspace outside Cuba's
 12-mile territorial limit.

 After consulting a meteorologist about winds and weather, Iglesias said he made
 two leafletting trips on Jan. 9, 1996, and Jan. 13, 1996. First he threw out a ``few
 thousand'' leaflets. The second time he dropped some 250,000.

 Basulto, Schuss and Juan Pablo Roque -- later revealed as a Cuban spy -- also
 made the first trip, he said.

 On Feb. 24, 1996, Brothers decided to make another search-and-rescue mission,
 Iglesias testified. In one Cessna flew Costa, the group's chief pilot, with Morales.
 In the second Cessna flew de la Peña and Alejandre. In the third Cessna, the lead
 aircraft, flew Basulto, Iglesias and observers Sylvia and Andres Iriondo.

 Iglesias said he ``had some reservations'' about the plan because it was his first
 flight since his controversial leafletting activities. No more leafletting was planned
 for that day, he said. Nor was there any plan to enter Cuban airspace.

 The aircraft took off late from Opa-locka airport and headed south. As Basulto
 approached the 24th parallel -- an imaginary dividing line in the Florida Straits
 marking the boundary of the airspace controlled by Miami FAA from the airspace
 controlled by Havana Center -- Basulto announced himself to Havana, Iglesias
 said.

 Havana's air tower responded. ``They expressed we were in danger crossing the
 24th parallel,'' Iglesias testified. But Basulto kept flying.

 Brothers pilot Guillermo Lares testified earlier that Brothers pilots had heard that
 warning many times before.

 But since the 24th parallel is still almost 40 miles north of Cuban airspace,
 Basulto and other pilots had a legal right to be there, Lares said.

 Iglesias testified that Costa and de la Peña also announced to Havana Center as
 they crossed the 24th parallel. Iglesias said he then took over the controls of
 Basulto's plane and started turning east.

 Suddenly, to the north, Iglesias saw a Cuban MiG. He maintained radio contact
 with Costa for several minutes. Then, ``in the distance, we could see a column of
 smoke.''

 Two of his friends had vanished.

 For six more minutes, Iglesias said, he had radio communication with de la Peña.

 Then, he saw ``like a ball of fire and another column of smoke.''

 Two more friends were gone.

 Iglesias is scheduled to continue his testimony on Monday.

 The human drama in the courtroom was matched by a tense legal battle that
 could have lasting implications for the government's case.

 Outside the jury's presence, U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard told prosecutors she
 has ``serious questions'' about whether they can offer Iglesias' testimony to
 authenticate a tape made by Basulto during the shoot down.

 The contents of the tape were not revealed. But in tapes previously made public,
 the Cuban MiG-29 pilot who fired could be heard exclaiming, ``We hit him.
 Cojones. We hit him. . . . This one won't mess around anymore.''

 To get the Basulto tape in, Kastrenakes could be forced to call Basulto as a
 government witness -- a move he apparently was trying to avoid.

 Defense attorney Paul McKenna has said his client, Gerardo Hernández, is a
 scapegoat in the shoot down and that Basulto is really to blame.

 Of the five accused spies on trial, Hernández faces the most serious charge:
 conspiracy to commit murder in the shoot down.