December 9, 1999
                  Web posted at: 8:02 a.m. EST (1302 GMT)

                  SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) -- A federal jury acquitted five Cuban
                  exiles on Wednesday of charges that they plotted to assassinate Fidel
                  Castro, quashing the first U.S. attempt to convict anyone for trying to kill
                  Cuba's communist leader.

                  The jury of eight women and four men delivered its verdict midway into its
                  second day of deliberations. Afterwards, one juror said prosecutors failed to
                  prove their allegation: that the defendants conspired to kill Castro during a
                  1997 summit on Venezuela's Isla Margarita.

                  The decision elicited tears and defiance from the defendants, all of them
                  anti-Castro activists, and cheers from their supporters at a crowded U.S.
                  courthouse in San Juan. If convicted, the men could have faced life in prison.

                  Cleared of conspiracy charges were Jose Antonio Llamas, a director of the
                  influential Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation; Angel Manuel
                 Alfonso; Angel Hernandez Rojo; Francisco Secundino Cordova and Jose
                 Rodriguez Sosa.

                  The defendants fled Cuba after Castro's 1959 revolution to become
                  businessmen in the United States. They now live in Florida and New Jersey.

                  Although there have been many reported attempts on Castro's life _
                  including some allegedly sponsored by the U.S. government -- it was the
                  first trial in the United States for an alleged plot against him.

                  Speaking outside the courtroom, where the tearful defendants hugged one
                  another and sang the Cuban anthem, Llamas said he and the other men felt
                  abandoned by the U.S. government.

                  "We feel we were betrayed in this trial the same way we were betrayed in
                  the Bay of Pigs invasion," he said.

                  "We will never stop fighting," Llama said. "And now that we have won once
                  against the biggest country in the world, look out Mr. Castro. Here we go --
                  in whatever way we can."

                  Three of the accused men were on a yacht stopped by the U.S. Coast
                  Guard off Puerto Rico on Oct. 27, 1997. When the Coast Guard searched
                  the yacht, they found sniper rifles, ammunition, night-vision goggles, radios
                  and satellite navigation equipment.

                  During the trial, prosecutors called investigators to the stand to document
                  how the men modified the boat for the long journey from Miami and had
                  rented an apartment on Margarita Island.

                  But defense lawyers denied the men were trying to kill Castro. They said the
                  men wanted to help members of Castro's entourage defect from the summit
                  being held on the Venezuelan island. The defendants claimed they needed
                  the weapons to protect themselves from possible aggression by Cuban
                  agents.

                  One of the men on the boat, Angel Alfonso, allegedly confessed to Coast
                  Guard officers that the men were planning to kill Castro. But defense
                  lawyers said Alfonso made up the story because he was frustrated and
                  believed the Coast Guard officers saw the men as gunrunners and common
                  criminals.

                  During the trial, the defense repeatedly emphasized how the men had
                  suffered as dissidents against Castro's communist government. Prosecutors
                  urged the jury to ignore Castro's human rights record in considering the
                  evidence. They argued that the men's actions, not Castro's, were on trial.

                  "We accept the jury's finding and we move on and we continue to attempt to
                  enforce the law," prosecutor Scott Glick said afterwards.

                  Juror Amanda Collazo said panelists heeded prosecutors' pleas to stick to
                  the evidence during deliberations -- and concluded there wasn't enough of it.

                  "We never decided if they were going to kill Castro or not. We decided that
                  the government did not have enough evidence. That was it. It was all a
                  question of doubt," she said.

                  Others were originally charged in the plot as well. But charges against one
                  defendant and Llamas' Florida company were dropped, and a defendant
                  suffering from cancer was granted a separate trial at a later date.

                  In a statement read at a demonstration on Wednesday night in Havana,
                  Cuba said the acquittals showed that the U.S. courts would not be able to
                  give a fair hearing to Juan Miguel Gonzalez, a Cuban man seeking to have
                  his 6-year-old son, Elian, returned home. Elian was rescued off the Florida
                  coast Nov. 25 during an illegal attempt to flee to the United States.

                  "This shows how very unreliable they are in that country, who would have
                  Elian's destiny in their hands," Castro said.

                  A spokeswoman for Llamas' group said the Clinton administration
                  deliberately moved the trial to Puerto Rico so it wouldn't be "contaminated
                  by the Cuban-American community in Miami," but the jury still found the
                  men not guilty, said Ninoska Perez of the Cuban American National
                  Foundation.

                    Copyright 1999 The Associated Press