US indicts former Cuban president Raúl Castro as it seeks to oust regime

Charges filed in Miami against 94-year-old for allegedly shooting down exiles’ planes in 1996

The United States issued a federal criminal indictment against Raúl Castro , Cuba ’s former president, and five others on Wednesday in a significant escalation of the Trump administration ’s campaign to oust the country’s six-decades-old communist regime.

The 94-year-old political figurehead was charged in Miami, Florida , with conspiracy to kill US nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft.

Other defendants are a fighter pilot who was initially charged in connection with a 1996 incident in which four men were killed by the Cuban military when their aircraft were shot down during a humanitarian mission in the Florida Straits.

Castro, Cuba’s defense minister at the time, is alleged to have given the order to open fire.

The indictment , in US district court for the southern district of Florida, comes at a time of heightened tension between the US and Cuba. Donald Trump has threatened military action against the Cuban government, and an energy crisis created by a tight US oil embargo has caused rolling blackouts and prompted protests in the capital.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday afternoon after the indictment was handed down, Trump said there “won’t be an escalation” with Cuba.

“I don’t think there needs to be,” he said. “Look, the place is falling apart. They’ve really lost control of Cuba.”

When asked if there would be an arrest similar to that of ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, he said: “I don’t want to say that.”

After the indictment was announced, the US military confirmed the aircraft carrier Nimitz and its escort warships had entered the southern Caribbean Sea, with the US Southern Command posting on X and hailing the fleet as “the epitome of readiness and presence, unmatched reach and lethality”.

Miami’s Freedom Tower, where more than half a million Cuban refugees were processed as immigrants between 1962 and 1974 after fleeing Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution, provided a symbolic backdrop for the indictment announcement, made on Cuban national day.

Todd Blanche, the acting attorney general, said: “For the first time in nearly 70 years, senior leadership of the Cuban regime has been charged in this country for acts of violence resulting in the deaths of American citizens.

“Nations, and their leaders, cannot be permitted to target Americans, kill them, and not face accountability.”

Miguel Díaz-Canel, the Cuban president, condemned the indictment as a political stunt that sought only to “justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba”. In a message on social media, he accused the US of lying and manipulating events surrounding the shooting down, including ignoring repeated warnings by Cuban officials at the time that they would defend against “dangerous violations” of their airspace “by notorious terrorists”.

Raúl Castro allegedly authorized the 24 February 1996 shooting down of two small planes belonging to the Miami-based Brothers to the Rescue volunteer group of exiles, which would scour the 90 miles of water between Cuba and the Florida Keys for refugees.

Four men, Armando Alejandre Jr, Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales, died after their Cessnas were hit by missiles fired from MiG fighter jets from the Cuban air force.

A third plane, piloted by the group’s founder, José Basulto, escaped and landed safely in Florida.

Raúl Castro stepped down as president in 2018, and resigned as secretary of Cuba’s communist party three years later, but remains one of the most powerful figures in Cuban politics. Fidel Castro died in 2016 at the age of 90.

It is uncertain whether he will ever face a US court to answer the charges. “We expect that he will show up here by his own will, or by another way,” Blanche said, an apparent allusion to the capture and extradition of Maduro by US military forces in January.

“We expect and believe Mr Castro is entitled to his day in court right here in Miami.”

Also on Wednesday, Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, posted a message to the Cuban people on X. In Spanish, he said: “The reason you are forced to survive without electricity is not due to an oil blockade by America.

“No electricity, fuel or food is because the people who control it have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people.”

Carlos Fernández de Cossío, Cuba’s deputy minister of foreign affairs, responded in his own post on X.

“The reason why the US secretary of state lies so repeatedly and unscrupulously when referring to Cuba and trying to justify the aggression imposed on the Cuban people is not ignorance or incompetence,” he wrote.

“He knows well that there is no excuse for such a cruel and ruthless aggression.”

Earlier, in Washington DC, a group of Cuban American Congress members hosted a press conference to welcome the indictment, which Blanche said was returned by a Miami grand jury on 23 April.

“Today is a glorious day for those Cubans who had to leave their homeland unwillingly, the people that we represent in the city of Miami, only because of the cruelty of the wickedness of a group of gangsters, the Castro family, who did nothing but seize the island to turn it into their own business,” said Maria Elvira Salazar, who represents south Florida.

Carlos Giménez, a Republican congressman from Florida, told reporters that the Brothers to the Rescue volunteers were trying to save lives when they were attacked.

“They were just looking for these rafters in the middle of the Florida Strait so that they wouldn’t die, and then they report the position to the Coast Guard, that’s all they were doing,” he said.

“They weren’t carrying drugs, they weren’t doing anything illicit, and they were international waters, and they were American citizens.

“For far too long this incident has gone without any repercussions for any of the people, or at least the person most responsible for this act, which was Raúl Castro.

“Why it’s taken 30 years, I don’t know why, but the number one job of any government is to protect its citizens. Finally, this administration, the Trump administration , has taken notice of that and said, ‘Yes, we will protect American citizens.’ And yes, maybe justice comes a little late in this case, but justice will be served.”

Salazar said she hoped Cubans on the island would continue to react to the US pressure, and Castro’s indictment, by protesting against their government.

“The message is for the Castro family: understand this well, that your days are over,” she said.

“A federal indictment is serious stuff. Maduro thought Trump was fooling … and look where Maduro is today, in a federal prison in New York.

“So we are sending the message to the Castro family, it’s time for you to leave. It’s time for you to heed the signal from the White House, do not fall into the abyss.

“You have the option not to wind up where Maduro is. You can leave now and let the island in the hands of the opposition forces, in the hands of freedom, so that destiny can bring Cuba to a different place.”