THE WASHINGTON POST: Former Cuban president Raúl Castro indicted in US on murder, conspiracy charges

A federal grand jury in Miami has indicted former Cuban president Raúl Castro in an attempt to hold him accountable for killing four people, three of them Americans, alleging that Cuban military forces were acting on his orders when they shot down two civilian aircraft in 1996.

The extraordinary indictment, which was returned by a grand jury in April and had been kept under seal, comes as the Trump administration has ratcheted up pressure to try to force political turnover in communist Cuba, and it is the latest example of the administration using its Justice Department to bolster foreign policy aims.

Top Justice Department officials announced the indictment Wednesday in Miami, the heart of the Cuban exile community.

Castro faces charges of murder, conspiracy to kill US nationals and destruction of aircraft, according to the indictment.

Law enforcement alleged that Castro directed the killing of the four men, members of a Cuban exile group who died when their private aircraft were downed in the Florida Strait between Cuba and South Florida.

In addition to Castro, five others allegedly involved were charged as well.

“My message today is clear,” acting attorney general Todd Blanche said at the news conference in Miami.

“The United States and the president cannot and will not forget its US citizens. President Trump is committed to restoring a very simple but important principle: If you kill Americans, we will pursue you no matter how much time has passed.”

The event was attended by hundreds of prominent Miami Cuban Americans, who responded to news of the indictment with standing ovations. Many have been involved for decades, along with successive Florida Republican lawmakers, in efforts to obtain a federal or state indictment.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel responded to the indictment Wednesday afternoon on social media, calling it a “a political maneuver, devoid of any legal basis, aimed solely at bolstering the dossier being fabricated to justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba.”

Castro, 94, took over the presidency of Cuba when his brother, Fidel Castro, stepped down in 2008.

With Fidel’s death in 2016, Raúl Castro became the island’s preeminent revolutionary hero. Although he left the presidency in 2018, Castro remained first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba until 2021.

It is unlikely that Castro will be extradited to the US to appear in court and face the charges. Absent Cuba’s cooperation, the indictment is likely to remain symbolic unless the US takes aggressive action to remove Castro from Cuba.

Blanche said that the indictment was more than just a gesture, adding that he expected Castro to appear in US court. He deflected questions about whether there would be military intervention to bring him out of Cuba.

“We expect that he will show up here by his own will or another way,” Blanche said.

The downed planes were flown by members of Brothers to the Rescue, a US-based humanitarian group formed in 1991 by Cuban exiles in Miami to patrol the Florida Strait in search of those fleeing the island and notify the U.S. Coast Guard to rescue them.

The group was founded by Jose Basulto, a veteran of the failed 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs by exile fighters organised and trained by the CIA.

There had been a massive exodus of tens of thousands of Cubans travelling to Florida on small boats, rafts and inner tubes in the early 1990s, though the number dropped after the Clinton administration in 1994 ordered the Coast Guard to intercept and detain those caught at sea.

The group’s interests also came to include harassing the Cuban government, sometimes flying over Cuban airspace and dropping leaflets urging residents to rise against the regime. Their campaigns had led to numerous complaints from Havana and assurances from the Clinton administration that it would stop.

On the day the planes were shot down in 1996, the group said it had been looking for Cuban rafters trying to flee the country in the Florida Straits when Cuba’s military downed the aircraft.

Numerous investigations at the time concluded that the planes were over international waters when they were downed. Cuba has long maintained that its investigation showed the planes over Cuban territorial waters.

The political fallout from the planes being shot down was swift, with US legislation passed to tighten the 1963 Cuban trade embargo imposed by President John F. Kennedy and calls to hold responsible Fidel and Raúl Castro, Cuba’s defense minister at the time.

Blanche held the news conference at Freedom Tower in Miami, where he was joined by Jason Reding Quiñones, the top federal prosecutor in South Florida; Florida Sen. Ashley Moody (R); and FBI Deputy Director Christopher Raia, all of whom spoke at the event. James Uthmeier, Florida’s attorney general, also attended.

Freedom Tower is a symbolic monument for Cuban Americans. It is where Cubans who were fleeing the communist revolution in the late 1950s and 1960s were processed and received aid when they arrived in Miami. It is considered the Ellis Island for the Cuban community.

In the indictment made public Wednesday - which was Cuban Independence Day - prosecutors alleged Raúl Castro, then Cuba’s vice president and the minister overseeing its armed forces, directly “authorized the use of deadly force” against the humanitarian planes in 1996.

“All orders to kill by the Cuban military traveled through this chain of command with [Raúl Castro] and Fidel Castro as the final decision makers,” the indictment stated.

In the weeks leading up to the planes being shot down, Cuba sent spies to the US to infiltrate Brothers to the Rescue and send details of its plans for future flights, the indictment says.

Prosecutors said Cuban government officials warned those spies not to fly with Brothers to the Rescue during the days leading up to the attack. Meanwhile, the indictment says, Cuban military pilots conducted training runs to target the slower-moving planes Brothers to the Rescue pilots used.

Several Cuban exiles in Miami were later prosecuted and convicted as spies for Havana for involvement in the shoot-down as well as other espionage.

The five others charged in the indictment made public Wednesday are allegedly all pilots who either shot down the two planes or were involved in pursuing a third Brothers to the Rescue plane that managed to escape.

The additional defendants include Lorenzo Alberto Perez‑Perez; Emilio José Palacio Blanco; José Fidel Gual Barzaga; Raul Simanca Cardenas; and Luis Raul Gonzalez‑Pardo Rodriguez.

Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, 65, of Havana, is in US custody facing sentencing in a separate case involving making false statements on a US immigration document.

“I think it was a very big moment for people that, not only Cuban Americans, but people that came from Cuba, that want to go back to Cuba, people that want to see their family in Cuba,” President Donald Trump told reporters Wednesday about the indictment. “They supported me to the nth degree. They supported me at levels that nobody’s ever seen before.”

Trump, in an executive order issued in the first week of his second term, declared a national emergency regarding Cuba, saying it presents “an unusual and extraordinary threat” because it has aligned itself with countries hostile to the US, including Iran, Russia and China.

Amid these tensions, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana last week for meetings with senior Cuban security and intelligence officials, including Raúl Rodriguez Castro, the powerful grandson of Raúl Castro.

The meeting came as extensive blackouts continued on the island, with the government acknowledging it was “without any reserves” to fuel power plants.

The Trump administration has adopted a policy of economic strangulation to try to drive the current leadership from power, actions that have gone above and beyond the US economic embargo imposed more than six decades ago.

The administration’s actions include expanded economic sanctions, a naval blockade preventing ships from carrying oil to the island and the threat of secondary sanctions on any other country or entity that trades with the Cuban government or designated individuals or companies.

Trump has suggested he could utilize a playbook in Cuba similar to the one he used in Venezuela earlier this year.

The Justice Department first indicted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro on narco-terrorism charges in 2020, though he was not extradited at the time. In January, the administration launched an attack on Venezuela, capturing Maduro and bringing him to New York to face charges.

The Trump administration, in part, described the capture as a law enforcement effort to ensure that Maduro faced his day in court on narco-terrorism charges. It left the rest of the Venezuelan government intact, saying that its Maduro-era leaders were cooperating with the United States. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has outlined a similar plan for Cuba, while demanding economic and political changes.

Trump has said that Cuba is “next in line” as soon as he finishes his war with Iran, although the administration has not publicly declared that it intends to use military force to achieve its goals in Cuba.

In March, The Washington Post reported that the Justice Department had formed a working group to examine possible federal charges against officials or entities within Cuba’s government.

The US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida - which includes Miami, the center of the Cuban exile community - has been overseeing the prosecution group.

The indictment’s unsealing came on Cuban Independence Day, which marks the anniversary of the establishment of the Republic of Cuba after the 1902 end of US military occupation that followed the Spanish-American War.

In a “Message to the Cuban People” on Wednesday, Rubio said he was aware of their “unimaginable hardships,” which he said were “not due to an oil ‘blockade’ by the US, but from the corruption of their leaders.

“In the US,” Rubio said, “we are ready to open a new chapter in the relationship between our people and our countries. And, currently, the only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country.”

DeYoung and Roebuck reported from Washington. Cleve R. Wootson Jr. contributed to this report.

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