Raúl Castro has been charged by U.S. prosecutors in connection with the 1996 downing of two civilian aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based exile group, in an episode that left four men dead. Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said the indictment was announced in Miami on Wednesday, tying the allegations to orders prosecutors described as originating with the Cuban leadership at the time.
The case centers on what prosecutors allege was a decision to authorize lethal action against the exile group after it conducted flights from Florida that dropped leaflets over Cuba in January 1996. In the indictment, prosecutors said Castro and his older brother, Fidel Castro, who was president then, were the final decision makers on orders to kill. Castro, 94, served as Cuba’s defense minister in 1996, when the aircraft were shot down.
Prosecutors said that after the January leaflet campaign, Raúl Castro ordered Cuban military officials in February 1996 to begin training with MiG fighter jets from Russia focused on finding, tracking and intercepting Brothers to the Rescue’s small planes off Cuba’s coast. They said two of three unarmed Cessna planes were shot down on Feb. 24, 1996, and that a third plane escaped.
According to the indictment as described by the Associated Press, the downing happened over international waters outside Cuban airspace, with Russian MiG pilots shooting the aircraft without warning, prosecutors said. The episode killed four men aboard the planes, including three U.S. citizens. The indictment charges Castro and five other people, including MiG pilots, with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals and multiple counts of murder and destruction of aircraft, with prosecutors saying the murder and conspiracy charges carry a maximum punishment of the death penalty or life in prison if convicted.
Blanche said he expected Castro to face the charges, telling reporters that he expected Castro to appear in the United States for prosecution, either “his own will or by another way.” Blanche said the federal government often indicts people outside the United States and uses a variety of methods to bring them to justice. The AP report also cited an earlier example in which former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was indicted and later seized by U.S. Special Forces in January.
The indictment lands amid pressure on Cuba by the Trump administration, the AP report said, with the U.S. blockading fuel and other goods and seeking to force Cuba’s socialist government to open its economy to American investment and remove U.S. adversaries. For Cuba and for exiles who have argued for years over who bore responsibility for the 1996 shootdown, the indictment adds a new legal chapter to a dispute that has already played out in public diplomacy.
Cuba’s government rejected the U.S. allegations. Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the indictment against Castro and accused the U.S. of lying about the 1996 shootdown, saying the case was “a political action without any legal basis” designed to justify what he called a military aggression against Cuba. Díaz-Canel also wrote on X that the shootdown was “legitimate self-defense” after repeated and dangerous violations of Cuba’s airspace by “notorious terrorists.” The Cuban government said in a statement that the Cuban people fully support Castro, adding the slogan “Homeland or Death, We Will Prevail.”
The AP report also pointed to how Cuba’s position appeared in United Nations Security Council proceedings at the time of the incident. A Cuban official, at a late-February 1996 Security Council meeting, insisted that the two planes were violating Cuban airspace when they were shot down and that a civilian pilot had ignored warnings not to enter that airspace, according to Security Council records. That official also alleged the U.S. did not take effective measures to prevent such airspace violations by U.S. pilots, despite warnings from Cuba.
For families of the dead and for members of the Cuban community in Miami, the indictment drew support from those who say accountability has been overdue. Marlene Alejandre-Triana, whose father, Armando Alejandre Jr, was among those killed in the 1996 shootdown, called the charges “long overdue,” saying her father wanted only to bring freedom to his Cuban homeland. Peter Hernandez, a Miami-area fruit and vegetable market owner, said he supported U.S. action to arrest Castro, describing him as “a criminal.”
Brothers to the Rescue dates back to 1980, during an emigration wave from Cuba to the United States, and its stated aim included helping Cuban refugees in the Florida straits by dropping supplies from small planes and alerting the U.S. Coast Guard during crisis periods. The indictment’s allegations return attention to how that activity ended in tragedy, and to the competing accounts—by prosecutors and by Cuban officials—of what happened during the aircraft downing off Cuba in 1996.