Justice Department Indicts Raúl Castro Over 1996 Brothers to the Rescue Shootdown

The Justice Department said Wednesday that former Cuban President Raúl Castro has been charged in U.S. federal court in connection with the 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes, a decades-old case that killed four men and long inflamed tensions between Washington and Havana.

The announcement came at an event in Miami attended by Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche and other senior Justice Department officials. The Associated Press and other news organizations, citing court records, reported that the indictment was filed in federal court in Miami, in the Southern District of Florida. According to those reports, the charges include one count of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft.

The case stems from the Feb. 24, 1996, destruction of two civilian aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based exile group. Four people were killed: three U.S. citizens and one U.S. lawful permanent resident. Current coverage of the case says the planes were flying humanitarian missions, and the International Civil Aviation Organization previously concluded that the shootdown occurred in international airspace.

“For nearly 30 years, the families of four murdered Americans have waited for justice,” Blanche said, according to the AP. “They were unarmed civilians and were flying humanitarian missions for the rescue and protection of people fleeing oppression across the Florida straits.”

AP and other outlets reported that five other people were also charged alongside Castro. There was no public indication Wednesday that Castro was in U.S. custody, and reporting said there was no evidence he had left Cuba or would be extradited to face trial in the United States.

Cuba’s government condemned the case. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel called it “a political action without any legal basis,” according to the AP.

The charges are notable because they publicly target Castro himself, a central figure in Cuba’s revolutionary government who oversaw the country’s defense and national security apparatus at the time of the 1996 incident. He later served as Cuba’s president before stepping down in 2018 and retired from Communist Party leadership in 2021. U.S. authorities had previously pursued legal action tied to the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown, including cases against Cuban military personnel, but those efforts did not result in extradition or a U.S. trial.