MIAMI — The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) presented this Wednesday a criminal accusation against Cuban dictator Raúl Castro for the death of four airmen of the Brothers to the Rescue organization 30 years ago, which increases pressure against the Havana regime.
These are the keys to the downing of the small planes, which occurred on February 24, 1996, and the indictment announced in the midst of the tightening of the sanctions promoted by the US president, Donald Trump, against the Cuban Government.
The charges
The US Government accuses Castro of seven charges: one for conspiracy to kill Americans, two for destruction of aircraft and four for murder for allegedly ordering the downing of aircraft in which three US citizens and a legal resident of the country, all of Cuban origin, were traveling.
The accusation states that Castro, then Minister of the Cuban Armed Forces, ordered the shooting down of the two small planes carrying Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Mario Manuel de la Peña and Pablo Morales.
The charges, filed in April in federal court for the Southern District of Florida and now unsealed, would imply a maximum sentence of death penalty or life imprisonment for Castrowho will turn 95 on June 3.
The fact
The accusation focuses on Castro’s role in the February 24, 1996 attack against four pilots from Brothers to the Rescue, an organization of exiles in the United States who helped rafters fleeing the island.
The relatives of the deceased maintain that Castro, as Minister of the Armed Forces, ordered the Cuban military to shoot down the small planes, an attack that was survived by the crew of a third aircraft, including José Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, and which represented a moment of extreme tension.
The tests
Crucial evidence is an audio revealed by the Miami newspaper Nuevo Herald from June 1996 in which Raúl Castro allegedly admits to having ordered the attack.
“I told them to try to knock them down above the territory, but they entered Havana and left,” Castro says in a meeting with journalists in Cuba. “With a rocket from those plane-planes, what comes down is a ball of fire, and it will fall above the city. Well, knock them down in the sea when they appear,” he adds.
Relatives of the victims and authorities also cite a report from the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) that concluded that the attack occurred in international waters.
Others noted
The formal accusation also includes other Cuban soldiers allegedly involved: Emilio José Palacio Blanco, José Fidel Gual Barzaga, Raúl Simanca Cárdenas, Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez and Lorenzo Alberto Pérez-Pérez.
The US Government had already accused General Rubén Martínez Puente and pilot Francisco Pérez-Pérez, now deceased, in 2003 of conspiracy to assassinate Americans, murder and destruction of planes, according to documents filed in a Miami court.
The Cuban version
Havana justified the shootdown and assured that the pilots were in Cuban airspace, so the military was “defending” the integrity of the territory.
In addition, they argue that the members of Hermanos al Rescate were “terrorists” who sought to destabilize Fidel Castro’s regime.
The tension between Washington and Havana
The indictment comes amid growing pressure from the Trump Administration on Cuba, particularly after the capture in Caracas in January of the deposed Venezuelan ruler Nicolás Maduro, who also faces criminal charges in the United States and is now imprisoned in New York.
Since then, Trump imposed an oil blockade on the island, raised his threats to “take control” of the country, and signed an executive order on May 1 to expand sanctions, which as of Monday include eleven senior Cuban political and military officials.
Castro’s arrest
The acting attorney general of the United States, Todd Blanche, rejected this Wednesday that the indictment is “symbolic”, amid reports about a negotiation between Washington and Havana, which includes Raúl Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez, alias the “Crab.”
Although he avoided answering whether Washington plans an operation in Cuba like the one that occurred in Venezuela on January 3, he insisted that “A warrant has been issued for his arrest,” so they hope “that he appears here of his own free will or by any other means and goes to prison.”
