The Justice Department indicted the former Cuban President Raúl Castro on charges including murder Wednesday, marking another significant escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against the Cuban government.
Castro, along with five other Cuban leaders, is being charged with seven counts, including four counts of murder, for his alleged role in Cuba’s shooting down of two planes in 1996. The planes were flown by members of Brothers to the Rescue, an organization that regularly flew planes over the waters between Cuba and the United States in an effort to help Cuban refugees seeking to escape to the U.S. On one such flight in February 1996, the Cuban armed forces shot down two of the organization’s planes with missiles, killing three American citizens and one U.S. resident. Cuba asserted that the planes were in Cuban airspace conducting surveillance for the American government, an allegation the U.S. denied.
The indictment was returned by a grand jury on April 23 and unsealed Wednesday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told reporters at a press conference.
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“Nations and their leaders cannot be permitted to target Americans, kill them, and not face accountability,” Blanche said. “President Trump is committed to restoring a very simple but important principle: if you kill Americans … we will pursue you no matter who you are, no matter what title you hold, and in this case, no matter how much time has passed.”
The current president of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel, wrote in a post on social media that the charges are “without any judicial basis” and demonstrate “the arrogance and the frustration that is provoked among the representatives of empire by the unbreakable firmness of the Cuban Revolution and the unity and moral strength of its leadership.”
Castro, who is 94, now rarely appears in public but reputedly retains significant influence over Cuban leadership.
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