MIAMI (AP) — On Wednesday, federal prosecutors unveiled charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, accusing him of involvement in the 1996 incident where civilian aircraft, operated by Miami-based exiles, were shot down. This move comes as part of the Trump administration’s intensified efforts to apply pressure on Cuba’s socialist regime.
The allegations against Castro pertain to his supposed participation in the destruction of two small aircraft flown by the exile organization Brothers to the Rescue. At the time of the incident, Castro, now 94, served as Cuba’s defense minister. The charges filed include counts of murder and the deliberate destruction of an aircraft.
During a Miami ceremony dedicated to honoring the victims of the shootdown, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, along with other senior officials from the Justice Department, made the formal announcement.
“The families of four Americans who were brutally killed have awaited justice for nearly three decades,” Blanche stated. “These individuals were unarmed civilians engaged in humanitarian missions aimed at rescuing and protecting those fleeing oppression across the Florida Straits.”
When questioned about the extent to which American authorities would pursue bringing Castro to face justice in the U.S., Blanche responded: “A warrant has been issued for his arrest. We anticipate that he will appear here, either voluntarily or through other means.”
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.
The indictment also charged five other people, including one of the Cuban military pilots accused of downing the planes.
Cuban president condemns indictment
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the indictment and accused the U.S. 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-defense within its territorial waters after repeated and dangerous violations of its airspace by notorious terrorists.”
He said U.S. 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 U.S. 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
President Donald Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba ever since U.S. forces captured the Cuban government’s longtime patron, Venezuelan President Nicolás 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 U.S.
“In the U.S., 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 symbolic nature is absolutely crucial,” said Lindsey Lazopoulos Friedman, a former prosecutor at the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami who handled national security cases and crimes involving Cubans.
The indictment can be used “as a pressure point, a tactical advantage, to extract other concessions like the release of prisoners or to keep Russia out,” she added.
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 U.S. 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.
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, 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 U.S. prison — for providing valuable intelligence about the flights.
The incident led the U.S. 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.
“Raúl was definitely one who slipped through the noose,” Lewis said.
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