The United States is reportedly preparing to indict former Cuban president Raul Castro for the fatal downing of airplanes three decades ago.
Castro – the 94-year-old brother of Cuba’s late dictator, Fidel – could be charged with the 1996 incident that left four dead when a pair of Cessnas from a humanitarian group were shot down by a Cuban fighter jet.
It remains unclear exactly what Castro could be charged with, but Cuba was accused of and widely condemned for violating international law after the deadly incident.
Any indictment would need to be approved by a grand jury before it could be issued, according to CBS News, which first reported the possible legal move Friday.
Castro led Cuba’s communist party from 2011 to 2021 and succeeded his radical brother as president from 2008 to 2018.
He also spent decades serving as secretary of Cuba’s armed forces, including during the 1996 plane incident.
It involved two small planes from the humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue, which would fly the waters around Cuba looking for rafts of people trying to flee the despotic Castro regime.
But the planes encountered a Cuban MiG-29, which shot them down and killed everybody on board.
Cuban authorities claimed the planes were violating the communist nation’s airspace and were carrying out a sabotage operation.
But the Organization of American States – a diplomatic group representing most countries from across the Americas – determined the planes were outside Cuban airspace, and were shot down without warning or justifiable purpose, according to CBS.
President Bill Clinton spoke out against the incident, saying he condemned it “in the strongest possible terms.”
Fidel Castro defiantly claimed responsibility for the shootdown, telling CBS at the time that he’d issued “general orders” to keep any unauthorized planes from encroaching on Cuban airspace.
The US convicted one person — accused of spying on the humanitarian group for Cuba — of conspiracy to murder over the deaths. That man was sentenced to life, but sent back to Cuba in 2014 as part of a prisoner swap.
Talk of an indictment against Castro comes as tensions between the US and Cuba have reached levels not seen for decades in recent months.
President Trump talked about carrying out a “friendly takeover” of the country while speaking to reporters in February, saying Cuba had “no money” and was looking for US help.
“The Cuban government is talking with us,” Trump said. “We could very well end up having a friendly takeover of Cuba.”
He doubled down on those claims in May, saying without elaborating that the US would be “taking over” the Caribbean country “almost immediately.”
“Cuba’s got problems. We’ll finish one first. I like to finish a job,” he said during remarks at the Forum Club of Palm Beaches, Florida.
Meanwhile, on Thursday, CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro — the grandson of ex-president Castro — to discuss the situation between the US and Cuba.
Ratcliffe delivered a personal message from Trump saying the US was “prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes,” a CIA official said.
The message also stated Cuba could “no longer be a safe haven for adversaries in the Western Hemisphere” – which could be referring to a Chinese spy base operating on the island nation, and possible plans for a Chinese military training facility.
President Trump has followed his rhetoric with threats to levy tariffs on countries sending oil to Cuba, as the nation has been struggling through an energy shortage.
Trump’s arrest and removal of despotic Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro in January have heightened tensions in the region.