February 27, 1996
Web posted at: 10:30 p.m. EST
MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- A Cuban-American group plans to send a flight this Saturday to the same spot where its planes were shot down by Cuban fighters last weekend.
Jose Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, told CNN the group's planes will fly over the area at roughly the same time as Saturday's attack. The four Cuban-Americans aboard the downed planes are presumed dead.
Basulto said a Catholic priest and Protestant minister will fly aboard the plane this time. The two clerics, who have not yet given their seal of approval to the plan, will participate in an "ecumenical commemoration" of those who died in the incident.
Cuba said it shot down the two planes in legitimate defense of its airspace after issuing warnings.
Basulto disagreed with speculation that one of his pilots -- Cuban Air Force defector Juan Pablo Roque -- was a Cuban spy planted in the emigre community.
Roque, who disappeared from his Miami home Friday and has been meeting with Cuban officials in Havana, appeared on Cuban TV Monday night and described himself as a former "FBI informant" who infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue as an agent for the Fidel Castro government.
In the interview, Roque said he was assigned by the Miami group to secure information on landing sites in Cuba where weapons could be shipped as part of an assassination plot against Castro.
Basulto said he believes Roque was a legitimate defector when he came to Miami in 1992 and that over time, he became "frustrated, disenchanted" because he was not getting enough recognition as a former military officer.
The White House on Monday asked the Federal Aviation Administration to limit flights over international waters separating Florida and Cuba, in part to prevent any provocative acts by Cuban exiles.
Asked about the possibility that the United States might halt his group's flight, Basulto said, "It would be a shameful act of cowardice by the U.S. government."
The FAA threatened to suspend Basulto's pilot's license last year after Brothers to the Rescue planes, including one he was piloting, flew over Havana and tossed out anti-Castro leaflets.
Basulto said he was disappointed by the Clinton administration's response to Saturday's shooting, which included a suspension of charter flights to Cuba, restrictions on the movements of Cuban diplomats in the United States, expansion of a Radio Marti, a U.S. station that broadcasts into Cuba, and a move to toughen the economic embargo.
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