BY GAIL EPSTEIN NIEVES

 Prosecutors continued laying groundwork in the Cuban spy trial Tuesday,
 showing jurors items confiscated from some of the defendants' apartments --
 including photographs that appeared to show Fidel Castro.

 The photos were among a group the FBI seized from suspect Rene Gonzalez's
 Kendall home Sept. 12, 1998. Also confiscated were group photos taken at a
 Brothers to the Rescue gathering.

 Chicago-born Gonzalez, 44, moved to Cuba in the 1950s, but returned to the
 United States in 1990. He flew missions for Brothers to the Rescue for several
 years, becoming close to Juan Pablo Roque, the pilot and double agent believed
 to have helped facilitate the shootdown that killed four Brothers fliers.

 Philip Horowitz, Gonzalez's attorney, suggested that one of the photos in his
 client's apartment showed not a live person, but a ``wax figure'' in a Havana
 museum.

 Neither he nor Assistant U.S. Attorney John Kaskrenakas ever said the words
 ``Fidel Castro'' when discussing the photos, which were shown to jurors and
 displayed -- in original form and blow-ups -- on several courtroom monitors. The
 significance of the pictures also was not explained.

 Prosecutors declined a request by The Herald to review the photos, which were
 entered into evidence. U.S. District Judge Joan Lenard set a 4 p.m. Thursday
 hearing on the newspaper's request for access to evidence as the trial unfolds.

 FBI agents also found a handwritten list of apparent airplane tail numbers in
 Gonzalez's apartment at 8000 SW 149th Ave., Apt. A403. They included N-2506
 -- the Cessna flown by Brothers to the Rescue leader Jose Basulto.

 Basulto was in that plane Feb. 24, 1996, when a Cuban MiG blasted two other
 Brothers planes from the sky over the Florida Straits. Prosecutors allege
 Gonzalez and Roque received warnings from Cuban intelligence forces only days
 earlier telling them not to fly with the rescue group that day.

 Codefendant Gerardo Hernandez is charged with conspiring to murder the
 Brothers fliers -- the most serious charge of the case.

 Fourteen people were indicted as alleged members of the so-called Wasp
 Network, La Red Avispa, and accused of monitoring U.S. military installations and
 Cuban exile groups.

 The defendants all acknowledge they were working for the Cuban government, but
 deny having passed on classified information or having any intent to harm U.S.
 interests.

 Lawyer Horowitz downplayed the discovery of a business card for U.S. Rep.
 Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Miami, in Gonzalez's apartment. Prosecutors claim
 Gonzalez, to further his spying, sought the congresswoman's help in getting his
 wife into the United States. But there was no testimony that Ros-Lehtinen
 assisted him.