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The U.S. 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. The AP reported that the potential indictment is linked to Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue.
AP said the three people spoke on 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, AP reported, after the story had been previously reported by CBS.
AP reported that any criminal charge against Castro would need to be approved by a grand jury. If charges are brought, the AP said it would sharply escalate tensions with Havana and raise expectations of further U.S. military action against Cuba, in the context of Trump’s threats toward the communist-run island.
The AP report also described how the Trump administration has been applying pressure on Cuba in recent years. It said that after the ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the administration quickly turned its attention to Cuba and ordered an economic blockade that it said choked off fuel shipments, contributing to blackouts and food shortages and a broader collapse in economic activity on the island.
The AP cited a potential strategic opening for Havana tied to the U.S. war in Iran. The AP reported that the Iran conflict appeared to give Cuban leaders a “breather” from U.S. talk of regime change as Trump seeks to wind down that conflict, and as speculation grows that he could return to Cuba after previously pledging a “friendly takeover” if Cuba did not open its economy to American investment and remove U.S. adversaries.
In response to reporters’ questions on Friday, Trump declined to discuss the possible indictment and deferred 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 said aboard Air Force One, adding, “We have a lot to talk about on Cuba, but not maybe for today.”
The AP also reported that CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials, including Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, during a high-level visit to the island on Thursday. The report said Castro, 94, took over the presidency from his ailing brother Fidel Castro in 2011 and then handed power to Miguel Díaz-Canel in 2019, while Castro had largely avoided the spotlight after retiring in 2021 as head of the Cuban Communist Party.
The Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, in which two Cessna planes were downed in 1996 and a third narrowly escaped, has long been described as a turning point in U.S.-Cuba relations. AP said that in 1996 the Cubans had warned the U.S. government that they were prepared to defend against what they considered deliberate provocations, and that missiles fired by Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets downed the unarmed civilian planes just beyond Cuba’s airspace, according to an investigation conducted by the International Civil Aviation Organization.
AP also reported that after the shootdown, Congress passed the law known as the Helms-Burton Act, which it said codified the U.S. embargo enacted in 1962 and made it more difficult for later U.S. presidents to engage with Cuba. The AP said the United States has convicted only one person for conspiracy to commit murder tied to the incident: Gerardo Hernández, a leader of a Cuban espionage ring dismantled by the FBI in the 1990s, who was sentenced to life in prison but released by President Barack Obama in 2014 in a prisoner swap.
Richard Feinberg, a professor emeritus at the University of California San Diego who specializes in Latin America, said any indictment would resonate with voters in south Florida but likely would not convince Pentagon officials to pursue another war “of choice” so close to the U.S. mainland. “There’s no easy Venezuela copy,” Feinberg said, adding, “There’s no clear line of succession and it’s hard to imagine regime change without U.S. boots on the ground.”
AP also reported that the Trump administration in March had created a special working group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement to build cases against top Cuban officials amid calls by several south Florida Republicans to reopen the investigation into Castro’s alleged role in the 1996 shootdown. It further said that in 1993 federal prosecutors in Miami considered charging Castro and other senior Cuban military officials with cocaine trafficking, but an indictment did not follow, according to an AP report from 2006, citing concerns about witness credibility and fears that it could disrupt U.S. intelligence operations and derail then-President Bill Clinton’s outreach.