The US government has announced it is bringing a lawsuit against Cuba’s former head of state, Raúl Castro.
According to the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, the 94-year-old is accused of involvement in the shooting down of aircraft by the Cuban Air Force in 1996, in which US citizens were killed.
Castro and others are charged with the destruction of one or more aircraft and four counts of murder.
According to the allegations, Castro, as defence minister at the time, is said to have overseen a chain of command that led to Cuban fighter jets firing on civilian aircraft over international waters. The lawsuit has been filed in a court in Florida.
Blanche said a grand jury approved the indictment back in April. He said Washington expects Castro to come to the US for his trial "by his own will or by another way."
Cuba's communist government in Havana immediately rejected the claim.
"This is a political manoeuvre, devoid of any legal foundation, aimed solely at padding the fabricated dossier they use to justify the folly of a military aggression against #Cuba," Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on X.
"The US lies and distorts the events surrounding the downing of the planes belonging to the narco-terrorist organization Brothers to the Rescue in 1996," he added.
The move is likely to significantly exacerbate tensions between Washington and Havana – at a time when the US is already putting the island nation under severe pressure with threats of takeover and sanctions.
Raúl Castro served as Cuba's defence minister for almost 50 years following the victory of the revolution in 1959, before succeeding his ailing brother Fidel Castro as head of state.
He initially took over the office of president on a provisional basis in 2006, and then officially from 2008 to 2018. After stepping down from the post, he remained at the helm of the Communist Party of Cuba until 2021.
As the younger brother of the historic revolutionary leader Fidel Castro and one of the last representatives of the revolutionary generation, he remains influential. He is regarded as a key figure operating behind the scenes in the government of Díaz-Canel and, as a former defence minister, has excellent connections within the powerful military, which controls a large part of the country's economy.
Raúl Castro was defence minister when the Cuban Air Force shot down two aircraft belonging to the then-active, Miami-based Cuban exile organization ‘Hermanos al Rescate’ (Brothers to the Rescue) during a flight off the coast of Cuba.
According to the government in Havana, the aircraft had entered Cuban airspace at the time. The International Civil Aviation Organization, however, concluded that they were over international waters. Three of the four fatalities were US citizens – relations between the US and Cuba deteriorated significantly as a result of the incident.
Several US Congress members wrote to the US government a few months ago calling for Raúl Castro to be charged, saying he had ordered the shoot-down in his capacity as defence minister at the time.
Frank Mora, a former senior defence official who now teaches at Florida International University, described the indictment to the New York Times as a "psychological operation."
He suggested it was more about stoking fear within the Cuban power apparatus to intimidate the leadership in Havana. The indictment had not yet been officially unsealed at the time of Mora’s comments, but various US media outlets already had information on the matter.
Relations between the two countries have been strained since the 1959 revolution. With the start of US President Donald Trump’s second term, the situation has escalated once again: the US government has placed the Communist Party-ruled island nation back on a US terrorism list – and has been ramping up pressure for months to force economic and political change there in the interests of the US.
Trump has also raised the prospect of a takeover of Cuba on several occasions. He described the socialist Caribbean island as a failed state and, following military operations in Venezuela and Iran, threatened: “Cuba is next.”
His secretary of state, Marco Rubio – the son of Cuban immigrants – has also long hoped for a change of power in Cuba.
Cuba is suffering from its worst economic crisis in decades. The situation is exacerbated by massive energy shortages, as the US government has imposed an oil embargo on the island nation since January. Power cuts lasting for hours – and sometimes affecting the whole country – are a regular occurrence, and there is a shortage of fuel, food and many other everyday necessities.
