Federal prosecutors in Miami have issued an indictment for Cuban revolutionary leader Raúl Castro, thirty years after they allege Castro ordered the murder of four Cuban-Americans, including two U.S. citizens.
Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Jr., Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales were flying two unarmed planes near the northern coast of Cuba when the Cuban Air Force shot down both planes on February 24, 1996, killing all four. Raúl Castro was the head of the Cuban military at the time.
The group of Cuban-Americans regularly flew with the humanitarian exile organization Brothers to the Rescue in the mid-90s, on operations to search the Straits of Florida for struggling Cuban rafters fleeing the Communist island.
Cuban authorities have long maintained that the aircrafts entered Cuban airspace after repeated warnings not to do so.
Elected officials, Cuban-American exile activists, family members and others piled into Miami's Freedom Tower — through which hundreds of thousands of Cuban refugees were processed in the 1960s — on Wednesday to get official word of the expected indictment.
READ MORE: The U.S. is expected to indict Raúl Castro. Is it a prelude to more serious U.S. action in Cuba?
Emotions were high before the announcement. Handshakes, hugs, backslaps. The general mood: This is the beginning of the end of the Cuban Revolutionary period.
"Today we are announcing an indictment of Raúl Castro and others with conspiracy to kill US nationals," said Todd Blanche, the acting U.S. Attorney General.
Nearly a minute of applause followed the announcement. The charges brought against Castro and five others were: conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, destruction of aircrafts and four counts of murder.
"If you kill Americans we will pursue you," added Blanche. "No matter how much time has passed."
A federal grand jury convened in the Southern District of Florida returned the indictment on April 23, and it was unsealed at the event.
"Today is a day of hope, a day that marks the beginning of a road for justice, a justice that has eluded the families and our community for 30 years," Sylvia G. Iriondo, a survivor of the shoot-down who was on a separate plane, told WLRN.
"We are starting to walk on that path, and we hope that our martyrs can rest in peace, their families have a resolution, and justice is done. Because without justice, there can be no peace."
Iriondo said she knows that the Cuban government will try to spin the indictment into something that works in their favor, but that the truth will prevail.
"They have been lying, and they have been committing crimes against the Cuban people and against humanity for 67 years. Enough," she said.
Marlene Alejandre-Triana was 18-years-old when her best friend informed her that her father was among those shot down.
"We were told there was nothing left of them, there was no way for the planes to survive that missile," she told WLRN.
She said that the indictment was "overdue," but that she was certain it would come some day. "He's very old and who knows what's gonna happen after today. Hopefully this is step one," she said.
Conviction far from assured
While the indictment has been broadly welcomed by the Cuban-American community, a successful prosecution in the case of an actual arrest of Castro is far from assured.
A day before the indictment was announced, the National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington D.C. released declassified federal documents showing that U.S. regulators were aware of "flagrant" violations of Cuban airspace. Federal officials said they feared that Brothers to the Rescue was "taunting" the Cuban government, and that they feared a "worst case scenario."
The records show that the U.S. State Department warned the Federal Aviation Administration that "one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes and the FAA better have all its ducks in a row."
The federal indictment comes as Republican Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced he also reopened a state-level investigation into the incident after calls to do so by Republican Cuban-American lawmakers.
It also follows a major ramping up of U.S. pressure on the Communist island that has been a thorn in the side of every administration since the Cuban Revolution ousted the U.S.-aligned government of Fulgencio Batista, and swept into power in 1959.
Weeks after the U.S. military invaded Venezuela and arrested president Nicolás Maduro on drug trafficking charges in January, President Donald Trump issued an executive order labeling Cuba an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to the United States. Further executive orders have followed.
Since then the U.S. has threatened nations with tariffs if they send oil to Cuba; used military ships to block oil shipments heading to the island; sanctioned more senior Cuba officials; increased the use of spy planes over the island; and openly floated the idea of a military invasion of Cuba.
The compounded actions have dramatically worsened material conditions on the island that were already rapidly deteriorating. The country has announced it has effectively run out of fuel. Blackouts last for over 20 hours a day in many areas. Hospitals struggle to generate power. Farmers cannot irrigate crops.
Meanwhile in February, a gunfight between Cuban-Americans and the Cuban military off the coast of the island left four dead.
In recent weeks, protests against the Cuban government have also begun to ramp up. And just this last week, CIA director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials in Havana, including Castro's grandson, an event that would have been unimaginable a few short months ago.
The ramped-up pressure campaign has created high expectations for parts of the Cuban-American community that clamor for the Trump administration take action to overthrow the Cuban government.
Yet victory in court is far from assured.
An independent analysis on the incident done by the International Civil Aviation Organization found that the United States had been repeatedly warned that Brothers to the Rescue planes had invaded its airspace. On two instances the month before the deadly incident, Brothers to the Rescue planes dropped thousands of anti-Castro leaflets into Havana.
José Basulto, the leader of Brothers to the Rescue, later acknowledged flying into Cuban airspace, calling it an act of "civil disobedience." During court testimony in 2001, Basulto also admitted to being trained by the CIA and to once launching a cannon and machine gun attack on a Cuban hotel from a boat.
Basulto was flying a third plane the day of the deadly incident. His plane got away.
Pressure on Castro
But for many Cuban-Americans, winning a murder case in court is not the point. The point is that Cuban leadership, most importantly Raúl Castro, feel pressured to step down after the indictment has been made public. The U.S. used an indictment against Maduro as the reason to invade Venezuela and forcibly extradite him.
"I think they are going to understand the signals being sent by the White House, and that Raúl, his son and his grandson are going to leave," Miami Cuban-American Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar told NTN24 on Tuesday. "It's been a long time that American justice has been needed, but now Donald Trump is in the White House and [Raúl's] time has come."
While Castro has not officially led the Cuban Communist Party since 2021, he is believed to retain tremendous influence on Cuban politics. He also retains sway over GAESA, the military conglomerate company he started that controls vast swaths of the Cuban economy. His close family members are heavily involved in the company.
For his part, President Trump has repeatedly said that Cuba is "next," after the U.S.-Israeli-Iran war draws to a close.
"I built this great military. I said, 'You'll never have to use it.' But sometimes you have to use it. And Cuba is next by the way," Trump said at a forum in Miami in March.
Other times, the president has suggested that no force will be needed: "We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba."
Mere hours before the formal announcement of the indictment, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, himself a Cuban-American, shared a direct message to the Cuban people. In Spanish, Secretary Rubio noted that May 20th is Cuban Independence Day, when the island was freed from U.S. occupation following the Spanish-American War.
Rubio said the U.S. government wants to offer a "new relationship" with the Cuban people. He said $100 million in aid is being offered
"In the U.S. we are ready to open a new chapter in the relationship between our people and our countries," said Rubio. "Currently, the only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country."
Cuban officials warn that any military invasion of the island will be met with resistance, with casualties coming from both Cuban and U.S. troops. Authorities on the island have begun distributing pamphlets on how to conduct guerilla warfare in the event of a U.S. invasion. Axios recently reported that Cuba has acquired drones that could strike military installations in Key West and the U.S. Naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The base has been leased or occupied by the U.S. — depending on who you ask — since the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the subsequent U.S. military occupation of the island.
Cuban officials stress that any action it might undertake is strictly defensive.
"Cuba is a country that is facing a constant threat from the U.S. government," Ernesto Soberon Guzman, the Cuban Ambassador to the United Nations told MS-NOW on Sunday. "Cuba possesses the right for a legitimate self-defense."
The shooting of the Brothers to the Rescue took place as the Clinton Administration was considering loosening the U.S. embargo against Cuba. But in the aftermath of the incident, public sentiment quickly shifted towards a more hardline stance, and Congress passed a law known as the Helms-Burton Act, cementing the embargo into law. The comprehensive sanctions regime that the law created is the only sanctions regime that the U.S. keeps against a foreign government that cannot be undone by the president alone.
Under the law, the U.S. embargo against Cuba will be lifted when Cuba allows for the creation of independent labor unions, releases political prisoners and publicly commits to free and fair elections under a multi-party system.
The Cuban government has resisted calls for each measure.
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