US federal prosecutors unsealed a case on Wednesday replace the prosecution Indictments against former Cuban leader Raúl Castro and five former Cuban military pilots Shot down in 1996 by two civilian aircraft belonging to the Miami exile group Brothers to the Rescue, which killed four people over international waters.
The 94-year-old Castro led Cuba’s armed forces at the time and later served as the island’s president.
The seven-count indictment accuses all six defendants of conspiring to kill U.S. citizens. Castro and a pilot, Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez, also face two counts of destroying aircraft and four counts of murder. Only one defendant, Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, 65, is in U.S. custody awaiting sentencing on an unrelated immigration charge; the rest, including Castro, are in Cuba.
According to the indictment, three unarmed Cessnas left Opa-Locka Airport on February 24, 1996, to patrol the Florida Strait for migrants fleeing Cuba. Cuban MiG jets destroyed two with air-to-air missiles over international waters, killing Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales. Prosecutors allege the attack was months of planning by Cuban intelligence agents who infiltrated the group.
The indictment is a continuation of a push by the Trump administration to prosecute foreign executives in U.S. courts. In January, American forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a raid on Caracas and flew him to New York to face narco-terrorism charges Fees. Cuba, a close ally of Maduro, said 32 of his employees died in this operation.
Castro’s indictment also comes amid the sharpest tensions between the U.S. and Cuba in years. Cuba has been on the US list of “state sponsors of terrorism” since January 2021; Trump reversed a last-minute push by Biden to remove him shortly after returning to office, and his administration issued a sweeping reset Sanctions This month, the attacks targeted Cuba’s military-run economy and dozens of regime officials. Havana denies supporting terrorism.
