The U.S. has charged former Cuban President Raúl Castro with murder
The U.S. Department of Justice has unsealed an indictment against former Cuban President Raúl Castro and five others. They are charged with murder and conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens in connection with the downing of two planes over Cuba nearly 30 years ago.
The indictment was filed in the U.S. District Court in Miami. The charges, which are based on a previous case filed in 2003, allowed the U.S. criminal justice system to be applied to Castro at a time of heightened tensions in relations with Cuba.
The charges were announced at a press conference in Miami by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason A. Reding-Quinones. They charged Castro and several others, including Cuban pilots, with the murder of four people who died when the Cuban military shot down two planes belonging to “Brothers to the Rescue” in 1996—a group of Cuban exiles that used the planes to search for Cubans fleeing the country by sea. Shortly after the incident, Fidel Castro took responsibility for the shoot-down, claiming that during previous flights, the organization had dropped leaflets over Havana calling for an end to the regime.
For all 30 years since the planes were shot down, Cuban-American lawmakers, émigré activists, survivors of the tragedy, and relatives of the victims have demanded that Raúl Castro, who was serving as defense minister at the time, be held criminally liable.
The Cuban government has not commented on the charges. In the past, Cuban officials have emphasized that they had long sought to stop these flights through diplomatic channels.
Although the investigation into Castro had been ongoing for several weeks, Quiñones decided to make the charges public on Wednesday, when Cuba celebrates Independence Day, which marks the end of the U.S. military occupation of the island in 1902.
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The U.S. is preparing charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro over events in 1996, when two civilian aircraft were shot down. This is one of the most high-profile cases in relations between Washington and Havana, which has returned to the legal agenda.
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