The Justice Department is preparing to seek an indictment against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, three people familiar with the matter told The Associated Press on Friday, as the Trump administration increases pressure on the communist-run island.
One of the people told the AP that the potential indictment is connected to Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of four planes operated by the Brothers to the Rescue. Castro served as Cuba’s defense minister at the time of the incident. The individuals spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. The Cuban government did not respond to a request for comment on the potential indictment, which was first reported by CBS.
Any criminal charge against Castro would require grand jury approval and could dramatically escalate tensions with Havana. It would also raise expectations of possible U.S. military action in Cuba, similar to the January operation in Venezuela that brought President Nicolás Maduro to New York on drug trafficking charges. Following Maduro’s ouster, the Trump administration ordered an economic blockade that choked off fuel shipments to Cuba, leading to severe blackouts, food shortages, and a collapse in economic activity across the island.
The ongoing U.S. war in Iran appeared to have given Cuban leaders a reprieve from U.S. regime-change rhetoric. As Trump seeks to wind down that conflict, speculation has grown that he may soon turn his attention back to Cuba, having pledged earlier this year a “friendly takeover” if Cuban leadership opened the economy to American investment and removed U.S. adversaries.
President Donald Trump declined to discuss the potential indictment on Friday, deferring the matter to the Justice Department. “But they need help, as you know, and you talk about a declining country — they are really a nation or a country in decline, so we’re going to see,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One. “We have a lot to talk about on Cuba, but not maybe for today.”
CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to the island on Thursday and met with Cuban officials, including Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the former president’s grandson. Castro’s grandson previously held a secret meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Raúl Castro, now 94, succeeded his brother Fidel as president in 2011, handed power to Miguel Díaz-Canel in 2019, and retired from the head of the Cuban Communist Party in 2021. He is widely believed to wield significant power behind the scenes.
Richard Feinberg, a professor emeritus specializing in Latin America at the University of California-San Diego, said an indictment would play well with voters in South Florida but is unlikely to persuade Pentagon planners to pursue a second war of choice. “There’s no easy Venezuela copy,” Feinberg said. “There’s no clear line of succession and it’s hard to imagine regime change without U.S. boots on the ground.”
The AP reported in March that the U.S. Attorney in Miami had created a special working group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement to build cases against top Cuban officials. The development followed calls by several South Florida Republicans to reopen the investigation into the 1996 plane shootdowns.
On Feb. 26, 1996, missiles fired by Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets downed two unarmed civilian Cessna planes just beyond Cuba’s airspace, according to an investigation by the International Civil Aviation Organization. A third plane, carrying the organization’s leader, narrowly escaped the attack. At the time, President Bill Clinton had been cautiously exploring ways to reduce tensions, but the Cuban military had warned the U.S. for months that it was prepared to defend against what it considered deliberate provocations by the exile group, which dropped anti-Castro leaflets and aided Cuban rafters.
Shortly after the shootdown, Congress passed the Helms-Burton Act, which codified the U.S. trade embargo enacted in 1962 and complicated efforts by subsequent administrations to engage with Havana. To date, the U.S. has convicted only one person of conspiracy to commit murder in connection with the incident. Gerardo Hernández, the leader of a Cuban espionage ring dismantled by the FBI in the 1990s, was sentenced to life in prison but released by President Barack Obama in 2014 as part of a prisoner swap aimed at normalizing relations. Two fighter jet pilots and their commanding officer have also been indicted but remain outside of U.S. jurisdiction in Cuba.
Castro had previously been subject to a U.S. criminal investigation. In 1993, federal prosecutors in Miami considered charging him and senior military officials with cocaine trafficking based on testimony from Colombian traffickers in the trial of former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega. Prosecutors ultimately declined to file an indictment over concerns about witness credibility and fears it could risk U.S. intelligence operations or derail Clinton’s diplomatic outreach.