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ASSOCIATED PRESS Brothers to the Rescue pilot Guillermo fares, left, consoles Armando Alejandre, the father of downed pilot Armando Alejandre Jr., at the group's hangar in Miami. The group has flown more than 3,000 missions since 1991.

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:Top speed; 190 mph Top speed: gct mph `Range: 755 miles Range: 1,300 Mites Length: 29 ft. 9 M. Length: 56 ft..10 in. Weight, empty: 2,695 lb Weight, empty: 18,025 lb Wingspan: 38 ft 2 in Wingspan: 37 ft 3.25 in Armaments: Capable of carrying several types of air to .missiles. Also configured with a 30mm gun.

SO-VCE..taries nfornation Group

BY D' NGELO- -THE WASSINGTON POST

Volunteer Fliers Had ed States. has n virtually beyond partisan The volunteer pilots for Brothers reproac . Hermanas al Restate bum- to the Rescue are mostly men and per stic ers tag thousands of South Widespread Support women in their twenties who fly in Florida utos, from luxury sedans to donated twin-engine, four-seater broken own clunkers. In Fla. Communities Cessna s. Before the shoot-down Sat- The oup's mission became the urday, there were five Cessnas; now darling .f the exile community and there are three. In the five years By Catharine Skipp inspires corporations such as Ameri- Special to The Washington Post since the group's inception, the pi- can Air es to donate aircraft and lots have flown more than 3,000 money. Cuban American singers MIAMI, Feb. 25—Brothers to missions over the waters between Willy I hirino and Gloria Estefan the Rescue, the Miami-based group the United States and Cuba to six t have he ped raise funds for the orga- of unpaid part-time pilots whose two rafters, drop supplies and coordinate nization s $1.2 million annual operat- planes were shot down Saturday af- refugee rescues by the Coast Guard. ing bud et. ternoon, inaugurated its search and Here, in an exile community often Abou half of the regular pilots are rescue mission on May 15, 1991. torn by disagreements and political not Cu an or Cuban American but Since then, the group's co-founder factioning, Brothers to the Rescue are vol teering out of ethical con- and president, Jose Basulto, a for- viction r to log flight hours in hopes mer Bay of Pigs prisoner of war and of beco g commercial pilots. " current Miami real estate developer, My ather was a German Jew," has overseen the rescue of some said S ephen Walton, a pilot for 7,000 Cuban balseros, or rafters, Ameri n Airlines and a Brothers fleeing their homeland across the volunte r pilot. "There was a time Straits of ;Florida. That figure, ac- when h had to rein for his 14°, and cording to Basulto and the U.S. people hat didn't know him helped Coast Guard here, reached its peak him, so it was karma payback time. just as President Clinton reversed In two ears [with the Brothers], I the three-decade policy of "paroling" flew m re than 600 hours." all Cuban immigrants into the Unit- ment is, let us be," Basulto told the Miami Herald last month. "Let us act. Do not impose your designs on Cuba. Your help in the past has not been successful." That last observa- tion could be an allusion to the botched Bay of Pigs invasion, which 6gL.V-f-t}.4- former soldiers such as Basulto wear as a bitter badge of dishonor. Or it could be a reference to dropping an- ti-Castro leaflets over Havana last July and again in January. The United States "enticed me before to go drop bombs on Cuba," Basulto said. "Why should they both- er me now if I go drop leaflets, espe- cially about human rights?" While the Clinton administration's change in policy in 1994 to repatri- ate Cuba- refugees has greatly re- duced the flow of rafters, the pilots

for Brothers to the Rescue are not without a mission: They fly weekly supply runs to refugees in the Baha- mas and oversee the safe return to Cuba of the occasional rafter. "They are the only folks still help- ing the rafter," said Rep. Ileana Ros- AGENCE FRANCE.PRESSE At Opa-Locka Airport, Cuban Americans protest the downing of the two Lehtinen (R-Fla.). "It's still an apolit- Cessna airplanes. The volunteer pilots were revered among Cuban exiles. ical humanitarian mission." To those who questioned Satur- day's alleged search and rescue mis- sion or the purpose of the flights, Basulto's only explanation was that a supply flight was canceled by the Ba- hamian government at the last min- ute, so the Hermanos decided not waste the day and aviation fuel. While non-exiles such as Walton fly for personal reasons, their charis- Basulto said the repeated warn- matic leader, Basulto, is unabashedly ings, "You are in danger," from the anti-Castro, patriotic to his roots and Cuban government were nothing fueled by a rage he never quelled. new. He dismissed them Saturday With a singular fervor that can best night by saying, "They always say be understood perhaps only by mem- that." That may be true, but just a bers of Miami's Cuban exile commu- couple of years ago he received a nity, Basulto feels entirely justified very different message from Cuban to conduct his airborne business. aviation officials during his search "My request to the U.S. govern- and rescue flights. "Suerte," they ra- dioed him. Luck. Special correspondent Gigi Anders contributed to this report.