Reuters
Saturday, May 8, 1999; Page A08

MIAMI, May 7—The alleged leader of a Cuban spy ring faces new charges of conspiring to commit murder in the 1996 shootdown of four Miami-based civilian pilots by a Cuban warplane, according to a U.S. indictment unsealed today.

The defendant, Gerardo Hernandez, was one of 10 people indicted in December on charges of spying for Cuba in the United States. Today's indictment, which supersedes the one in December, added four defendants to the original charges as well as the conspiracy to commit murder charge against Hernandez.

Hernandez was charged in the earlier indictment under the alias Manuel Viramontes. Prosecutors said he was a Cuban military captain sent to the United States in 1992 with orders to penetrate U.S. military bases and exile groups, and that one of his aims was to sow discord among exiles and discredit their leaders.

The new indictment alleges he conspired with the Cuban military to kill four Miami pilots whose planes were shot down over international waters on Feb. 24, 1996. A Cuban MiG fighter attacked the planes belonging to Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based exile group that searches for Cuban refugees at sea.

One of the four new defendants charged with spying was Juan Pablo Roque, a Brothers to the Rescue pilot who had lived in Miami and returned to Cuba one day before the shootdown. The other three new defendants were identified only as "John Does."

The original indictment produced the largest known roundup of agents from Havana since Castro's 1959 revolution and caused a sensation in Miami, bastion of the exile cause.