In a controversial move that has sparked sharp international backlash, the United States has unsealed a criminal indictment charging former Cuban President Raúl Castro with murder in connection with the 1996 downing of two civilian aircraft that left four people dead, including three American citizens. The indictment, announced Wednesday, also names five other co-defendants, accusing them of conspiring to order the strike against planes operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban-American dissident organization that was flying between Cuba and Florida at the time of the incident.
Castro, who governed Cuba from 2006 (in an acting capacity) through 2018 when he formally stepped down from office, has not been arrested or presented to U.S. authorities, and legal analysts remain uncertain how U.S. officials could ever move forward with a trial given the former leader’s status in Havana. The charges on the indictment carry extraordinarily severe penalties, ranging from life imprisonment to capital punishment.
The U.S. legal action has drawn immediate condemnation from two major global powers, China and Russia. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun called on Washington to abandon its pattern of coercive pressure, urging the U.S. to stop what he framed as the misuse of unilateral sanctions and domestic legal systems to target the Cuban government.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov doubled down on the criticism, stating that the ongoing campaign of international pressure against Cuba is unacceptable, and warning that the latest U.S. legal action against the former Cuban leader borders on overt aggressive violence.
Cuba’s sitting President Miguel Díaz-Canel has also rejected the indictment outright, dismissing it as a baseless political stunt with no legitimate grounding in international or domestic law. The incident marks another sharp escalation of long-running tensions between the U.S. and Cuba, drawing major powers into a new diplomatic standoff over what Havana and its allies frame as an overreach of U.S. jurisdiction.