BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

                      PANAMA CITY, Panama - After languishing in jail for 16 months, four Cuban exiles accused of plotting to
                      assassinate Fidel Castro now believe they were caught in an elaborate Cuban intelligence trap designed to divert
                      attention from Castro's own connections to terrorism.

                      The discovery of a crucial piece of evidence -- the C-4 explosives that were to be used in the alleged plot -- in a
                      gym bag bearing the logos of the Florida Marlins and The Miami Herald is considered by them a telltale sign that
                      Castro was trying to point the finger at Miami exiles.

                      The exiles' most detailed version yet of the events that landed them in a Panama jail is contained in a 400-page
                      manuscript in which a man now portrayed as a Castro agent confided in mid-2000 that Cuba's top spy planned to
                      defect when Castro visited Panama later that year.

                      ''He will do this only if you pick him up in person,'' the man allegedly told one of the men arrested, Luis Posada
                      Carriles, because the spy chief knew that other Miami exile groups were ''under a high grade of infiltration'' by
                      Cuba's intelligence services.

                      Posada, 73, Gaspar Jiménez, 65, Guillermo Novo, 61, and Pedro Remón, 56, were detained here Nov. 17, 2000,
                      hours after Castro arrived for a summit and notified Panamanian authorities of a plot to assassinate him.

                      ''It was a trap,'' Remón acknowledged in an unpublished book he wrote in prison under the title of ''The Real
                      Terrorist'' -- referring to Castro's support for foreign subversive and terrorist groups.

                      TALE OF INTRIGUE

                      Remón's book denies any murder plot but tells a twisted tale of intrigue that begins in 1999, with Posada allegedly
                      making covert contacts with unidentified Cuban military and security officers on the island who were tired of
                      Castro's rule.

                      According to Remón, on June 24, 2000, an envoy who called himself Emilio flew from Havana to El Salvador,
                      where Posada lived in hiding since 1985, and called him on a cellular telephone whose number was known only to
                      the ''cells'' on the island.

                      After giving the code words -- ''without country but without lord,'' a Cuban exile motto from a José Martí poem --
                      the messenger met Posada the next day over coffee and doughnuts at San Salvador's Cafeteria Biggest,
                      according to Remón.

                      The messenger reported that Intelligence Directorate Chief Gen. Eduardo Delgado would defect -- but only to
                      Posada -- while accompanying Castro to Panama for an Ibero-American Summit and reveal all the names of
                      Havana's infiltrators in Miami.

                      Jiménez counseled Posada not to go to Panama alone. Jiménez, Novo and Remón, all U.S. citizens living in Miami,
                      agreed to join Posada in Panama to help protect him and spirit Delgado to a safe place, according to Remón.

                      ''Havana manufactured the scheme, and Luis carried it out,'' said a longtime Posada friend aware of many of his
                      activities.

                      The friend said he had heard rumors that unknown exiles urged Posada weeks before the summit to try to kill
                      Castro. Posada agreed to explore the possibilities and asked for $100,000 in operational funds, but never intended
                      to carry out the attack, the friend said.

                      PLAN CANCELED

                      That version coincides with a Herald report last year that Posada had told a Panamanian official in a ''private''
                      prison chat that he had canceled a plan to kill Castro with a car bomb to avoid killing innocent civilians.

                      Remón wrote that Posada arrived in Panama Nov. 5, using a false Salvadoran passport. The three others arrived
                      Nov. 16 by land from Costa Rica, and they all met later that day in Room 310 at the Royal Suite hotel in the
                      capital's El Cangrejo neighborhood.

                      Cuban officials later gave Panamanian prosecutors covertly snapped photographs of the three men crossing the
                      Costa Rican border, and a video of Posada, Jiménez and Novo outside their hotel the evening the arrived.

                      That afternoon, according to Remón, Posada received a call on his cellular phone from a man who told him to
                      meet him at the Hotel Las Vegas the next morning, but did not use the right code word. Posada was suspicious
                      and talked about moving out of the hotel later that night, but in the end decided to stay, still hoping that Delgado
                      would contact him.

                      Castro warned Panamanian authorities of the alleged plot shortly after his arrival at 10 a.m. on Nov. 17, then told
                      a press conference at 3 p.m. that Posada was on his trail. He made no mention of the other men.

                      Posada and Jiménez were napping when police burst into their room.

                      Remón and Novo were returning from buying cold drinks at a nearby store when they were detained, Remón
                      reported. None of the exiles was armed.

                      Two days later, José Manuel Hurtado, a Panamanian chauffeur whom the men had hired, led police to 17.6 pounds
                      of C-4 plastic explosives stuffed in a teal and black gym bag with the Herald and Florida Marlins logos.

                      DIFFERENT VERSIONS

                      Hurtado initially told police he found the bag in the exiles' rented car after their arrest and tried to hide it, but later
                      gave two other versions. Remón claimed the explosives were planted by Cuban agents -- with the logos intended
                      to point to Miami exiles.

                      Remón argues that if Castro really believed the exiles were bent on killing him, the notoriously security-conscious
                      president would not have risked going to Panama without first tipping off local authorities.

                      ''Its clear, then, that there was a propaganda intention,'' Remón wrote, not only to overshadow Castro's refusal to
                      sign a condemnation of terrorism adopted at the summit but to smear the four exiles.

                      Cuba has accused Posada, a CIA-trained explosives expert, in the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner that killed 73
                      people; Posada denies responsibility. Venezuela has also asked for Posada's extradition for escaping from a
                      prison there in 1985.

                      Remón was convicted in 1986 of trying to kill a Cuban diplomat and bomb a Cuban office in New York. Jiménez
                      was arrested in Mexico in the 1970s on charges of killing a Cuban official but escaped and returned to Miami. Novo
                      was convicted of perjury for denying that he knew details of the 1976 murder in Washington of former Chilean
                      Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier.

                      PRESSURING PANAMA

                      Since the arrests, the Cuban government has kept up a steady drumbeat of pressures on Panama to extradite
                      Posada -- the request was denied last year -- and all but threatened Panama if the courts do not convict the four.

                      ''Cuba expects these terrorists will be convicted, and the government of Panama will assume a great international
                      responsibility if it allows those people to evade justice,'' Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque of Cuba said last
                      month.

                      But the evidence is so weak that prosecutors recently recommended dropping the attempted murder charge and
                      trying the four only for possession of explosives and conspiracy to commit a crime.

                      Posada and Jiménez also could face charges of entering the country with false passports.

                      Defense lawyer Martín Cruz said a trial expected in four to six months will probably either clear them or convict
                      only on the lesser charges, whose maximum jail terms they will have already served.