Raúl Castro indictment centers on exiles’ Brothers to the Rescue

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The Justice Department’s move to seek an indictment against former Cuban leader Raúl Castro over the 1996 shootdown of two civilian planes has put Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based exile group, back at the center of one of the most enduring episodes in U.S.-Cuba conflict. Prosecutors tie the case to Castro’s alleged role in the incident, when he was Cuba’s defense minister and the country’s top authority after Fidel Castro.

Brothers to the Rescue began operating in 1980, after waves of Cubans emigrated unexpectedly to the United States. Founded by exiles including José Basulto, the organization said its aim was to help Cuban refugees in the Florida straits by dropping supplies from small planes and by alerting the U.S. Coast Guard.

In the run-up to the shootdown, a broader immigration standoff set the context for the group’s flights. The AP account describes months of crisis after some Cubans protested travel restrictions imposed by Fidel Castro’s government and after Cuba opened the port of Mariel to those who wanted to leave, sending more people into the Florida straits. The Clinton administration later changed U.S. immigration rules to discourage the route by sea, while Brothers to the Rescue continued flying toward Cuban airspace and provoking Havana.

The specific incident occurred on Feb. 24, 1996, when three planes carrying members of Brothers to the Rescue entered an area near the 24th parallel, north of Havana and closer to what Cuban aviation would have considered high-value targets. Cuban fighter planes shot down two of the exiles’ unarmed civilian Cessnas, killing all four men aboard, while a third plane carrying the organization’s leader narrowly escaped.

The AP report also links the confrontation to questions about what each side did—or did not do—to prevent it. William LeoGrande, a specialist on Cuba at American University, and Peter Kornbluh, a senior analyst at the National Security Archive, said that a 2015 book they co-authored, “Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana,” shows that warnings from the Clinton administration about provoking Cuba did not halt Hermanos al Rescate’s operations.

LeoGrande and Kornbluh wrote that only after the shootdown did the Federal Aviation Administration issue a “cease and desist” order against Basulto, describing the operations as “careless or reckless” and saying they “endanger the lives or property of others.” They told AP that, between Brothers to the Rescue’s flights, the U.S. failing to stop the group, and Cuba’s air force firing on civilian planes, “there’s no good guys in this story.”

The shootdown story also includes prior criminal cases that sought accountability in the years after the incident. The U.S. counterintelligence effort caught five Cuban intelligence agents who had infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue, and elements of the episode were later fictionalized in the movie “The Wasp Network.” Two of the Cuban agents served long sentences, while three were released in a prisoner exchange that came before former President Barack Obama’s detente with Raúl Castro.

Two Cuban fighter jet pilots and their commanding officer were indicted in the shootdown and have remained outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement while living in Cuba. The AP report says Lt. Col. Lorenzo Alberto Pérez-Pérez was among three people indicted in August 2003 and accused of murder, aircraft destruction and conspiracy.

After the shooting, Pérez-Pérez told Cuban state television that he intercepted the aircraft, identified and warned the planes based on orders from controllers, and said the planes ignored his warnings. The AP account quotes him saying, “We tried to dissuade their crew members, but they continued to dangerously approach the Cuban coast and then we received the order to interrupt the flight of the first aircraft,” and adding that afterward Cuban forces carried out the same operation with the second plane, “which also refused to change its direction.” At the time, the U.S. government said Cuba’s intent was “to terrorize the Cuban population” on the island and in Miami.