The United States indicted former Cuban president Raúl Castro in connection with a 1996 incident, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on Wednesday, marking an escalation in the pressure campaign against the communist government in Havana.
Castro faces charges including murder, conspiracy to kill US nationals, and destruction of aircraft, in circumstances that seem very much like the Trump administration’s deadly campaign of blowing up suspected drug-trafficking boats, known as Operation Southern Spear, has killed at least 194 people in the Caribbean Sea and the Eastern Pacific since September.
The charges against Raúl Castro, 94, and others were based on a 1996 incident in which Cuban jets shot down planes operated by a group of Cuban exiles.
Castro was the defense minister when the two Cessna planes belonging to a Cuban-American exile group were shot down by air-to-air missiles in international airspace.
Four members of a Miami-based anti-Castro humanitarian group known as Brothers to the Rescue were killed, including three Americans.
Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche said Castro was facing charges including “four individual counts of murder” and “conspiracy to kill US nationals” as well as the destruction of aircraft.
“For nearly thirty years – thirty years – the families of four murdered Americans have waited for justice,” Blanche said.
“This is a story all too familiar,” he added.
The indictment comes as President Donald Trump has pushed for regime change in Cuba, where Castro’s communists have been in charge since his late brother Fidel Castro led a revolution in 1959.
“America will not tolerate a rogue state harboring hostile foreign military, intelligence, and terror operations just ninety miles from the American homeland,” said Trump.
Trump has not provided public evidence that the vessels targeted by Operation Southern Spear were carrying drugs, and the campaign has drawn severe legal and ethical scrutiny.
Several allegations of war crimes surfaced after early strikes involved follow-up attacks to kill survivors who were clinging to the wreckage.
Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel insisted on Monday that the island does not represent a threat to the United States.
The US has effectively imposed a blockade on Cuba by threatening sanctions on countries supplying it with fuel, triggering power outages and exacerbating its worst crises in decades.
“Cuba is next,” Trump said last month in Miami during a speech in which he touted the successes of US military action in Venezuela and Iran.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose parents were Cuban immigrants to the United States, offered to forge a new relationship between the two countries in a video message addressed to the Cuban people on Wednesday morning.
He said the US could provide $100 million in aid and blamed Cuba’s leaders – and not the United States – for shortages of electricity, food, and fuel.
Speaking in Spanish, Rubio said the food and medicine must be distributed by the Catholic Church or other trusted charitable groups.
In response, Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez called Rubio “the mouthpiece of corrupt and vengeful interests” but did not rule out accepting the aid.
“He keeps talking about an aid package of 100 million dollars that Cuba has not rejected, but whose cynicism is evident to anyone in light of the devastating effect of the economic blockade and the energy stranglehold,” Rodriguez wrote in a post on X.
Born in 1931, Raúl Castro was a key figure alongside his older brother Fidel in the guerrilla war that toppled US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. He helped defeat the US-organized Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961.
He served as Cuba’s defense minister before assuming the presidency in 2008 after his brother fell ill. Fidel Castro died in 2016.
Raúl Castro stepped down from the presidency in 2018 but remains a powerful figure in Cuban politics.
The filing of the criminal case against a US adversary like Castro recalls the earlier drug-trafficking indictment of imprisoned former Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, an ally of Havana’s.
The Trump administration cited that indictment as a justification for the January 3 raid on Caracas by the US military in which Maduro was captured and brought to New York to face the charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
Trump says Cuba’s communist government is corrupt, and in March threatened that Cuba “is next” after Venezuela.
Diaz-Canel said on Monday that any US military action against Cuba would lead to a “bloodbath”.
Discover more from NJTODAY.NET
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.