The charges, likely to remain symbolic, are related to the deadly downing of two planes in 1996 and come as the Trump administration has ratcheted up pressure on Cuba.
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Castro and five others are charged with conspiracy to kill US nationals, murder, and destruction of aircraft
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This is from 30 years ago, but it’s just coming up now?
Because…the extraordinary indictment, which was returned by a grand jury in April and had been kept under seal, comes as the Trump administration has
ratcheted up pressure to try to force political turnover in communist Cuba, and it is the latest example of the administration using its Justice Department to bolster foreign policy aims? So…?
I’m sure as hell not justifying murder, but the timing is just curious. Top Justice Department officials announced the
indictment Wednesday in Miami, the heart of the Cuban exile community because…?
Castro, 94, took over the presidency of Cuba when his brother, Fidel Castro,
stepped down in 2008, and it’s a decade too late to charge Fidel who died in 2016, so Raúl three decades after the fact, now that it’s politically expedient to do so, will have to do?
With Fidel’s
death in 2016, Raúl Castro became the island’s preeminent revolutionary hero. Although he left the presidency in 2018, Castro remained first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba until 2021, and now its 2026.
It is unlikely that Castro will be extradited to the U.S. to appear in court and face the charges. Absent Cuba’s cooperation, the indictment is likely to remain symbolic
unless the U.S. takes aggressive action to remove Castro from Cuba
.
Acting attorney general Todd Blanche said that the indictment was more than just a gesture, adding that he expected Castro to appear in U.S. court.
He deflected questions about whether there would be military intervention to bring him out of Cuba
.
“
We expect that he will show up here by his own will or another way,” Blanche said. Dude is 94yrs old. Doubt he’s planning a trip to an American show trial.
The downed planes were flown by members of Brothers to the Rescue, a U.S.-based humanitarian group formed in 1991 by Cuban exiles in Miami to patrol the Florida Strait in search of those fleeing the island and notify the U.S. Coast Guard to rescue them.
The group was founded by Jose Basulto, a veteran of the failed 1961 invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs by exile fighters organized and trained by the CIA. There had been a massive exodus of tens of thousands of Cubans traveling to Florida on small boats, rafts and inner tubes in the early 1990s, though the number dropped after the Clinton administration in 1994 ordered the Coast Guard to intercept and detain those caught at sea
.
Raúl Castro was armed forces minister when Cuban military jets shot down two civilian planes operated by exiles of the communist country.
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The group’s interests also came to include harassing the Cuban government, sometimes flying over Cuban airspace and dropping leaflets urging residents to rise against the regime.
Their campaigns had led to numerous complaints from Havana and assurances from the Clinton administration that it would stop.
A Florida grand jury indicted Raul Castro, the former leader of Cuba’s Communist regime, with murder and other charges for the 1996 shootdown of American humanitarian airplanes. NBC News Gabe Gutierrez reports.
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