US federal prosecutors on Wednesday unsealed a superseding indictment charging former Cuban leader Raúl Castro and five former Cuban military pilots in the 1996 shootdown of two civilian planes flown by the Miami exile group Brothers to the Rescue, an attack that killed four people over international waters.
Castro, 94, headed Cuba’s armed forces at the time and later served as the island’s president.
The seven-count indictment charges all six defendants with conspiracy to kill US nationals. Castro and one pilot, Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez, also face two counts of destruction of aircraft and four counts of murder. Only one defendant, Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, 65, is in US 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 Feb. 24, 1996, to patrol the Florida Straits 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 followed months of planning by Cuban intelligence agents who had infiltrated the group.
The charges extend a Trump administration push to pursue foreign leaders in US 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. Cuba, a close Maduro ally, said 32 of its personnel were killed in that operation.
Castro’s indictment also lands amid the sharpest US-Cuba tensions in years. Cuba has been on the US “state sponsors of terrorism” list since January 2021; Trump reversed a last-minute Biden effort to remove it shortly after returning to office, and his administration issued sweeping new sanctions this month targeting Cuba’s military-run economy and dozens of regime officials. Havana denies sponsoring terrorism.
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