US moving to indict former Cuban president Raúl Castro amid escalating tensions: reports
WASHINGTON, DC: Amid escalating tension between Washington and Havana, the United States is allegedly moving toward indicting Raúl Castro, the 94-year-old former Cuban president and brother of Fidel Castro.
The potential charges are related to a 30-year-old case, where the Cuban government shot down two planes operated by the humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue in 1996, US officials familiar with the matter told CBS News.
Raúl Castro officially left leadership of Cuba’s Communist Party in 2021, but the longtime revolutionary figure continues to wield enormous influence behind the scenes and remains one of the country’s most powerful powerbrokers.
CIA Director’s visit to Cuba
The news of Castro’s possible indictment came after CIA Director John Ratcliffe visited Cuba on Thursday, May 14, following an earlier US visit last month.
The Trump administration confirmed that Ratcliffe led a delegation to deliver a message from President Donald Trump to Cuban officials and Raúl ‘Raulito’ Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, the elder grandson of the former President.
According to a CIA official, the message signalled that the US is "prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes.”
The official added that Cuba can "no longer be a safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere."
This came a couple of months after four lawmakers, led by Rep Mario Diaz-Balart, requested the President to indict Castro as a way of addressing “a longstanding injustice that, under your leadership, your administration is uniquely positioned to resolve once and for all.”
The lawmakers said Castro was “responsible for the cold-blooded murders of three Americans and a US permanent resident” in the shootdown.
1996 shootdown of Brothers to the Rescue aircraft
The 1996 downing of two civilian aircraft operated by the exile organization Brothers to the Rescue remains one of the most explosive chapters in modern US-Cuba relations.
During the incident of February 24, 1996, planes operated by the humanitarian group were patrolling the Florida Straits looking for endangered Cuban rafters trying to reach US shores.
But before the planes could finish the operation, they were shot down by Cuban Air Force MiG fighter jets. Fidel Castro claimed the planes violated Cuban airspace.
The US Congress, at that time, concluded that Brothers to the Rescue “were flying unarmed and defenseless planes in a mission identical to hundreds they had flown since 1991 and posed no threat whatsoever to the Cuban Government, the Cuban military, or the Cuban people.”
At the time of the incident, Raúl Castro served as Cuba’s defense minister and commander of the armed forces, and was widely regarded as the key figure overseeing the country’s military and intelligence operations during the shootdown.
