The lawyer for a Cuban commercial pilot who faces deportation said Wednesday that his client saw Cuban MiGs rehearse a dry run of the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue shootdown and that he is cooperating with federal authorities.

FBI spokesman Mike Fabregas said he could not confirm either the allegation or the claim of cooperation. ``It's a pending matter and it would be inappropriate for us to comment at this time,'' he said. The U.S. attorney's office in Miami declined to comment.

But Tampa attorney Ralph Fernandez told The Herald in a telephone interview that he would meet with federal officials in Miami today. He would then brief Brothers founder Jose Basulto on the account by his client -- an acquitted hijacker -- and then release details at an afternoon news conference.

``We have already had a number of meetings with U.S. officials, which have led to debriefings, extensive, over a period of months,'' Fernandez said. His client, he said, ``can establish premeditation by the Cuban government in the assassination of the four Brothers to the Rescue fliers.''

Cuban MiGs shot down two small Brothers aircraft Feb. 24, 1996, killing four South Florida-based Brothers members in international waters.

This is Fernandez's account, which The Herald could not independently verify:

Adel Regalado Ulloa, 23, claims that in early 1996 he was a pilot for a small tourist business in Cuba. Six days before the shootdown, Cuban authorities ordered him and another commercial pilot to bring a Polish-made Wilga aircraft to Jose Marti International Airport in Havana.

There, with another Cuban piloting the Wilga, MiG fighter pilots simulated all but the shootdown, using the civilian aircraft for ``an adjustment and precision run,'' Fernandez said. Regalado was not aboard the plane at the time.

Six months later, Regalado and two other men hijacked the same Wilga aircraft from Cuba. Pilot Adolfo Perez Pantoja flew until he ran out of fuel and crashed into the sea about 35 miles west of Fort Myers.

A Russian freighter rescued all four. Perez returned to Cuba while the other three claimed political asylum in the United States. They were denied asylum and tried on skyjacking charges in a federal court in Tampa, where they were acquitted.

Today, all three men are still jailed, in an Immigration and Naturalization Service center in Bradenton. They face deportation because they entered the United States illegally.

Fernandez, a Cuban-American attorney who has been active in anti-Castro causes, described his client as a former Cuban dissident who should be admitted to the United States. He has characterized his client's cooperation with federal officials as a reason to let him stay here legally.

He first went public with details of his client's story in January.

Fernandez added that he learned of his client's story on the first day of Regalado's 1997 hijacking trial in Tampa. The Cuban man leaned forward in court and whispered in his lawyer's ear: ``By the way, I saw the practice run of the downing.''