US federal prosecutors overnight announced charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro in the 1996 downing of civilian planes flown by Miami-based exiles as the Trump administration escalated pressure on the island’s socialist government.
The indictment was related to Castro’s alleged role in the shootdown of two small planes operated by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Castro, now 94, was Cuba’s defence minister at the time. The charges included murder and destruction of an aeroplane.
“For nearly 30 years, the families of four murdered Americans have waited for justice,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in Miami at a ceremony to honor those killed. “They were unarmed civilians and were flying humanitarian missions for the rescue and protection of people fleeing oppression across the Florida straits.”
Asked to what lengths American authorities would go to bring Castro to face charges in the US, Blanche said: “There was a warrant issued for his arrest. So we expect that he will show up here, by his own will or by another way.”
The federal government, he said, indicts people outside the US “all the time” and uses a variety of methods to bring them to justice.
A grand jury in Miami returned the indictment in late April before it was unsealed Wednesday, Blanche said. Five other people were also charged, including three Cuban military pilots.
Asked what will happen next for Cuba, President Donald Trump said, “We’re going to see.” He added that the US is ready to provide humanitarian assistance to a “failing nation.”
The charges pose a real threat, observers said, because former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was indicted on drug-related charges before he and his wife were seized by US special forces in the Venezuelan capital in January.
“He’s going to have to keep his head pretty low from now on,” said Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst and specialist on the US-Cuba relationship at the National Security Archive. “They’re going to have no choice but to take this threat extremely seriously.”
Cuban president condemns indictment
While it remains unclear whether Castro will ever step foot in a US courtroom, the murder and conspiracy charges carry the potential for life in prison or the death penalty upon conviction.
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the indictment and accused the US of lying and manipulating the events of 1996. He called it “a political action without any legal basis” that only seeks to “bolster the case they are fabricating to justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba.”
Díaz-Canel wrote on X that Cuba acted in “legitimate self-defence within its territorial waters after repeated and dangerous violations of its airspace by notorious terrorists.”
He said US officials at the time had been warned about the violations but allowed them to continue.
Marlene Alejandre-Triana, whose father, Armando Alejandre Jr, was among those who died, said the charges were “long overdue.” She said her father only wanted to bring freedom to his Cuban homeland.
Over the years, she spoke to multiple federal investigators about charging Castro. She referred to him as “one of the main architects of the crime.”
In Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood, Peter Hernandez, whose family owns a fruit and vegetable market, said he would welcome the US sending its military to arrest Castro.
“He’s a criminal,” said Hernandez, whose parents moved from Cuba to South Florida before he was born.
“I think we should do that with all criminals, especially if they’re hiding behind a country that consistently has been proven that they are on the wrong side of our national security efforts and ideology.”
Trump has threatened military action for months
Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba ever since US forces captured Maduro, the Cuban government’s longtime patron. After ousting the Venezuelan leader, the White House ordered a blockade that choked off fuel shipments to Cuba, leading to severe blackouts, food shortages and an economic collapse across the island.
Since Maduro’s capture, Trump has ratcheted up talk of regime change in Cuba after pledging earlier this year to conduct a “friendly takeover” of the country if its leadership did not open its economy to American investment and kick out US adversaries.
Trump’s first administration indicted Maduro on drug-trafficking charges and used that to justify removing him from power and whisking him to New York to face trial.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday urged the Cuban people to demand a free-market economy with new leadership that he said will chart a new course in relations with the US.
“In the US, we are ready to open a new chapter in the relationship between our people,” Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said in a Spanish-language video message. “Currently, the only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country.”
Raúl Castro believed to wield power behind the scenes
Castro took over as president from his ailing older brother Fidel Castro in 2006 before handing power to a trusted loyalist, Díaz-Canel, in 2018.
While he retired in 2021 as head of the Cuban Communist Party, he is widely believed to wield power behind the scenes, underscored by the prominence of his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, who previously met secretly with Rubio.
Last week, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana for meetings with Cuban officials, including Castro’s grandson. Two other senior State Department officials met with the grandson in April.
The investigation into Castro stretches back to the 1990s
Starting in 1995, planes flown by members of Brothers to the Rescue, a group founded by Cuban exiles, buzzed over Havana dropping leaflets urging Cubans to rise up against the Castro government.
The Cubans protested to the US government, warning that they would defend their airspace. Federal Aviation Administration officials also opened an investigation and met with the group’s leaders to urge them to ground the flights, according to declassified government records obtained by George Washington University’s National Security Archive.
But those calls went unheeded and on February 24, 1996, missiles fired by Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets downed two unarmed civilian Cessna planes a short distance north of Havana just beyond Cuba’s airspace. All four men aboard were killed.
Raúl Castro faced earlier indictment
Guy Lewis, who was a federal prosecutor, uncovered evidence linking senior Cuban military officials to cocaine trafficking by Colombia’s Medellin cartel. Following the shootdown, the investigation expanded, and prosecutors pursued charges against Raúl Castro for leading a vast racketeering conspiracy by Cuba’s armed forces.
In the end, the Clinton administration indicted four individuals, including the MiG pilots involved in the downing of the planes. The shootdown led the US to harden its position against Cuba, even though the Cold War had ended and the Castros’ support for revolution across Latin America was a fading memory.
But Castro himself was spared as the Clinton administration raised concerns about such a high-profile indictment.