A man whose brother was shot down last month during a search-and-rescue mission for a Cuban exile group reached U.S. soil Saturday, jubilant after the same group helped him defect.

"I'm very happy to be in this marvelous country of liberty!" Nelson Daniel Morales Barba told reporters and camera crews as he emerged from immigration offices at Miami International Airport.Morales' younger brother, 29-year-old Pablo Morales, was one of four men killed when Cuban MiGs shot down two unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes Feb. 24 off the coast of Cuba.

Cuba has said the group's planes were in its territorial airspace, but the United States maintains they were shot down over international waters.

"I was very nervous when the Cuban authorities told me my brother was shot," said the 20-year veteran of Cuba's merchant marine. But Morales, 48, said his shipmates aboard the cargo ship Sirens all knew what had happened - "and there was no trouble at all with them."

On hand to greet Morales was Jose Basulto, president and founder of Brothers, a Miami-based Cuban exile group that rescues Cuban refugees and has dropped anti-Castro leaflets over Cuba.

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Morales was granted humanitarian parole by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.

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