Defense lawyers called Lazaro Betancourt, a former commando who guarded Castro, to the stand in an effort to show that security around the Cuban leader is so tight the six Cuban exiles on trial – who range in age from 52 to 70 – would have been foolish to consider the alleged plot.
"We laughed about it," Betancourt said at the trial of the men, who are accused of planning to kill Castro at a Latin American summit on Venezuela's Isla Margarita two years ago.
"We are trained to confront large armed forces, armed professional groups – not four or five elderly people who had been caught in Puerto Rico for who knows what," said Betancourt, who defected when Castro was attending a Caribbean summit in the Dominican Republic in April.
Earlier Wednesday, Judge Hector Laffitte dismissed charges against one of the six, Alfredo Domingo Otero, apparently for lack of evidence. Laffitte refused on Tuesday to dismiss charges against five other Miami and New Jersey businessmen, all activists in the anti-Castro movement in the United States.
Three of the accused men were on board a yacht stopped by the U.S. Coast Guard in international waters off Puerto Rico on Oct. 27, 1997. Prosecutors charge the other three helped organize the plot.
Otero was accused of monitoring the boat's position from Miami. But Otero said he had asked someone else to do the monitoring and was unaware of any plot against Castro.
Although there have been many reports of attempts to kill Castro, this is the first such trial in the United States.
The case began when Coast Guard officials boarded the yacht for a routine check. When they searched the boat, they found two .50-caliber sniper rifles, ammunition, night-vision goggles, radios and satellite navigation equipment.
At that point, one of the men blurted out that they were on their way to assassinate Castro.
However, when the trial began two weeks ago, defense lawyers said the men actually were going to the island to help any members of Castro's entourage who wanted to defect. They said they needed the military equipment for protection.
To demonstrate the dangers to those who help defectors, defense lawyers Wednesday called Cuban-American activist Jose Basulto, founder of the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue organization.
Basulto recalled the 1996 incident in which Cuban military planes shot down two unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes, killing four members as they flew over international waters near Cuba during a mission to spot rafters. "I was the target. I was flying in the third airplane, but I escaped," Basulto said.
The best known defendant in the case is Jose Antonio Llamas, a director of the influential Miami-based Cuban American National Foundation.
Charges also were dropped Wednesday against Llamas' Florida company, Nautical Sports, which owns the yacht, La Esperanza.
© Copyright 1999 The Associated Press