The United States has indicted 94-year-old former Cuban president Raul Castro over the 1996 downing of civilian planes manned by critics of the communist state.
An indictment unsealed in a federal court on Wednesday in Florida charged the influential former president over the 1996 downing of two civilian planes manned by anti-Castro pilots.
Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel, reacting to the decision, said that it is a “political move with no legal basis.”
The charges aim to “add to the file they are fabricating to justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba,” he said in an X post.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier offered to forge a new relationship between the US and Cuba in a video message to the Cuban people, offering $100 million in aid and blaming Cuba’s leaders for shortages of electricity, food and fuel.
President Donald Trump has been seeking regime change in Cuba, where communists have been in charge since Raul Castro’s late brother Fidel Castro led a revolution in 1959.
The US has effectively imposed a blockade on the island by threatening sanctions on countries supplying it with fuel, triggering power outages and delivering blows to its already fragile economy.
Cuba has yet to comment directly on the indictment, though Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez expressed defiance in public comments on May 15.
“Despite the (US) embargo, sanctions and threats of the use of force, Cuba continues on a path of sovereignty towards its socialist development,” Rodriguez said.
Brothers to the rescue
