US indicts Cuba's former president Raul Castro, 94, in connection with a 1996 incident

The charges against Raul 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 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 US President Donald Trump has pushed for a 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,” Trump said in a statement earlier in the day.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel insisted on Monday that the island does not represent a threat to the United States.

Blackouts

The US has ‌effectively imposed a blockade on Cuba by threatening sanctions on countries supplying it with fuel, triggering power outages and exacerbating its worse 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.

Read more‘Raulito’ Castro, the Trump administration’s wild card in Cuba

Born in ​1931, Raul 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. 

Raul 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”.

(FRANCE 24 with Reuters)