By: Staff Writer
May 22, 2026
The US has indicted former Cuban president Raul Castro, brother of former president and Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro, for his involvement in the 1996 downing of two planes by the Cuban military that killed three Americans.
In the 1990s, a Miami-based volunteer organization called Brothers to the Rescue carried out regular flights attempting to find and assist Cubans trying to sail to the US.
Cuba has been subject to a blockade by the US since 1960. It was also subject to an embargo by the members of the Organisation of American States (OAS), which includes almost all the countries in the Western Hemisphere, between 1964 and 2009.
A group of Cuban exiles, led by self-declared “Bay of Pigs veteran”, José Basulto, flew reconnaissance flights and reported the location of stranded Cubans to the Coast Guard.
But the flights had other motives. On several occasions, the planes flew into Cuban airspace, ignored warnings and dropped propaganda designed to trigger anti-government activity.
Records made public by William LeoGrande and Peter Kornbluh, authors of a book on the topic, reveal the US knew of these operations and feared Cuba would eventually shoot down the planes, creating an international incident.
On February 24 1996, the Cuban military indeed shot down two planes, killing all four people on board.
Now, 30 years later, the US Department of Justice alleges that Castro, the then-defence minister, and six others are criminally responsible for the murders of the four men, three of whom were US citizens.
The US attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Jason A Reding Quiñones, said “this passage of time does not erase murder”.
Castro, now 94, was then head of the country’s armed forces and faced international condemnation over the crash.
As the US seeks to exert increasing pressure on Cuba’s communist rule, President Miguel Díaz-Canel called the charges “a political manoeuvre, devoid of any legal foundation”.
Speaking at Freedom Tower in Miami, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the US would also charge Castro with destruction of aircraft, and four individual counts of murder over the deaths of Armando Alejandre Jr, Carlos Alberto Costa, Mario Manuel de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.
“The United States, and President Trump, does not, and will not, forget its citizens,” Blanche said.