Miami:
Federal prosecutors on Wednesday announced charges against former Cuban President Raul Castro in the 1996 downing of civilian planes operated by Miami-based exiles as the Trump administration escalated pressure on the 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.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and other top Justice Department officials made the announcement in Miami at a ceremony to honour those killed in the shootdown.
“For nearly 30 years, the families of four murdered Americans have waited for justice,” Blanche said. “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 in another way.”
The federal government, he said, indicts people outside the United States “all the time” and uses a variety of methods to bring them to justice.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-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.”
Diaz-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.”
President Donald Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba ever since US forces captured the Cuban government’s longtime patron, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. After ousting Maduro, 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 U.S. adversaries.
Trump’s first administration indicted Maduro on drug-trafficking charges and used that to justify removing him from power during a surprise military raid in January that whisked the Venezuelan leader 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.”
Cuba’s deputy foreign minister, Carlos F de Cossio lashed out at Rubio on X, saying he “lies so repeatedly and unscrupulously about Cuba and tries to justify the aggression he inflicts on the Cuban people.” Rubio “knows full well that there is no excuse for such cruel and ruthless aggression.”
Castro took over as president from his ailing older brother Fidel Castro, in 2006 before handing power to a trusted loyalist, Diaz-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, Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, who previously met secretly with Rubio.
Last week, CIA Director John Ratcliffe travelled to Havana for meetings with Cuban officials, including Castro’s grandson. Two other senior State Department officials met with the grandson in April.
“The symbolic nature is absolutely crucial,” said Lindsey Lazopoulos Friedman, a former prosecutor at the US attorney’s office in Miami who handled national security cases and crimes involving Cubans.
“Even though Raul Castro will likely stay and die in Cuba, you can use the indictment as a pressure point, a tactical advantage, to extract other concessions like the release of prisoners or to keep Russia out,” she added.
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.
“This latest overflight can only be seen as further taunting of the Cuban Government,” an FAA official wrote in an email to her superiors after one intrusion in January 1996. “Worst case scenario is that one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes.”
But those calls went unheeded, and on Feb. 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.
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 Raul Castro for leading a vast racketeering conspiracy by Cuba’s armed forces.
“The evidence was strong,” Lewis said in an interview.
In the end, the Clinton administration indicted four individuals, including the MiG pilots, the head of the Cuban air force and the head of a Cuban spy network in Miami – the only one to see the inside of a US prison – for providing valuable intelligence about the flights.
The incident 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 – which had quietly sought to expand relations with Cuba prior to the incident – raised foreign policy concerns about such a high-profile indictment.
“Raul was definitely one who slipped through the noose,” Lewis said. “The crime is notorious. Three US citizens and one legal permanent resident were killed in a premeditated orchestrated murder. That should never be forgotten.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
