U.S. Indicts Raúl Castro, Stepping Up Pressure on Cuban Government
The Justice Department indicted Raúl Castro for the 1996 shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue planes that killed four people.
The United States has brought criminal charges against the former Cuban President Raul Castro as the Trump administration seeks an end to the Communist-run regime on the island. Castro, 94, who took over from his brother Fidel to run the country from 2011 to 2021, is still seen as one of the most powerful figures in the country which is now suffering a major energy and food crisis exacerbated by a U. S.
fuel blockade. While the U. S.
has issued the criminal charges, it does not have the jurisdictional power to go into Cuba and arrest Castro. Announcing the charges on Wednesday, Justice Department officials said Castro, a Cuban revolutionary leader who helped his brother Fidel run the country for decades, was wanted for his alleged role as defense minister in ordering the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft belonging to the Cuban-American group Brothers to the Rescue. Four people, three of them Americans, were killed in the attack by two Cuban MiG fighters in international airspace.
The indictment represents charges that federal prosecutors in Miami first drafted in the 1990s following the incident, which hardened U. S. -Cuba relations and prompted Congress to strengthen the embargo against the island.