AP News53%
US raises pressure on Cuba with indictment of former leader as island’s president condemns charges 50%
By JOSHUA GOODMAN0% ALANNA DURKIN RICHER47%
5/20/2026, 4:03:35 PM
Topics: Politics
Keywords: Donald Trump, Raul Guillermo Rodriguez Castro, Marco Rubio, Nicolas Maduro, Indictments, Todd Blanche, Cuba, Miguel Diaz Canel, Miami, U S Venezuela Conflict, Military And Defense, Cuba Government, Latin America, Florida, Fl State Wire, Central America, Politics, George Washington, Guy Lewis, Barack Obama, Armando Alejandre Jr, U S Department Of Justice, Raul Castro, John Ratcliffe, United States Government, Marlene Alejandre Triana, Fidel Castro
BS Summary: This article contains 27 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Availability Heuristic, and Post Hoc (False Cause), with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 35.3% saturation with 349 hits. Analysis detected 1,860 faulty-reasoning hits from 989 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 49.9% and a BS Rank of 50% (11,106 of 21,887 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 50.70% of the article peer group.
MIAMI (AP) — Federal prosecutors on Wednesday announced criminal charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro in the 1996 downing of civilian planes flown by Miami-based exiles as the Trump administration escalated pressure on the island’s socialist government.
The indictment accuses Castro of ordering the shootdown of two small planes operated by the exile group Brothers to the Rescue.
Castro, who turns 95 next month, was Cuba’s defense minister at the time.
The charges, which were secretly filed by a grand jury in April, included murder and destruction of an airplane.
Five Cuban military pilots were also charged.
“For nearly 30 years, the families of four murdered Americans have waited for justice,” acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in Miami at a ceremony coinciding with Cuban independence day to honor those killed.
“They were unarmed civilians and were flying humanitarian missions for the rescue and protection of people fleeing oppression across the Florida straits.”
Asked to what lengths American authorities would go to bring Castro to face charges in the U.S., Blanche said: “There was a warrant issued for his arrest.
So we expect that he will show up here, by his own will or by another way.”
Asked what will happen next for Cuba, President Donald Trump said, “We’re going to see.”
He added that the U.S. is ready to provide humanitarian assistance to a “failing nation.”
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the indictment as a political stunt that sought only to “justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba.”
In a message on social media, he accused the U.S. of lying and manipulating events surrounding the shootdown, including ignoring repeated warnings by Cuban officials at the time that they would defend against “dangerous violations” of their airspace “by notorious terrorists.”
Among those attending Wednesday’s ceremony in downtown Miami was Marlene Alejandre-Triana, whose father, Armando Alejandre Jr, was killed while she was away for her first year of college.
Over the years, she spoke to multiple federal investigators about charging Castro, referring to him as “one of the main architects of the crime.”
But none until now had the courage to seek justice for her family and the other victims.
“It has been long overdue,” she said standing before a giant photo of her father.
Trump has been threatening military action in Cuba ever since U.S. forces captured Maduro, the Cuban government’s longtime patron.
After ousting the Venezuelan leader, the White House ordered a blockade that choked off fuel shipments to Cuba, leading to severe blackouts, food shortages and an economic collapse across the island.
Since Maduro’s capture, Trump has ratcheted up talk of regime change in Cuba after pledging earlier this year to conduct a “friendly takeover” of the country if its leadership did not open its economy to American investment and kick out U.S. adversaries.
Trump’s first administration indicted Maduro on drug-trafficking charges and used that to justify removing him from power and whisking him to New York to face trial.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday urged the Cuban people to demand a free-market economy with new leadership that he said will chart a new course in relations with the U.S.
“In the U.S., we are ready to open a new chapter in the relationship between our people,” Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, said in a Spanish-language video message.
“Currently, the only thing standing in the way of a better future are those who control your country.”
Castro took over as president from his ailing older brother Fidel Castro in 2006 before handing power to a trusted loyalist, Díaz-Canel, in 2018.
While he retired in 2021 as head of the Cuban Communist Party, he is widely believed to wield power behind the scenes, underscored by the prominence of his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, who previously met secretly with Rubio.
Last week, CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Havana for meetings with Cuban officials, including Castro’s grandson.
Two other senior State Department officials met with the grandson in April.
In 1995, planes flown by members of Brothers to the Rescue buzzed over Havana dropping leaflets urging Cubans to rise up against the Castro government.
After Cuban protests, the Federal Aviation Administration also opened an investigation and met with the group’s leaders to urge them to ground the flights, according to declassified government records obtained by the National Security Archive.
But those calls went unheeded and on Feb. 24, 1996, missiles fired by Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets downed two unarmed civilian Cessna planes a short distance north of Havana just beyond Cuba’s airspace.
All four men aboard were killed.
A third plane, carrying the group’s leader, narrowly escaped.
While it remains unclear whether Castro will ever step foot in a U.S. courtroom, the murder and conspiracy charges carry the potential for life in prison or the death penalty upon conviction.
Castro himself was spared as the Clinton administration raised concerns about such a high-profile indictment.
Guy Lewis, who was a federal prosecutor in Miami in the 1990s, first uncovered evidence linking senior Cuban military officials to cocaine trafficking by Colombia’s Medellin cartel.
Following the shootdown, the investigation expanded, and prosecutors pursued charges against Raúl Castro for leading a vast racketeering conspiracy by Cuba’s armed forces.
In the end, only the head of the Cuban air force and two of the MiG pilots involved in the downing of the planes were indicted but have never been apprehended.
A fourth individual was convicted of leading a Miami-based spy ring called Operation Scorpion that collected intelligence about the flights.
He was later swapped for a U.S. intelligence asset imprisoned in Cuba as part of President Barack Obama’s outreach to Cuba.
The shootdown led the U.S. to harden its position against Cuba, even though the Cold War had ended and the Castros’ support for revolution across Latin America was a fading memory.
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100%flagged-word coverageMiguel Díaz-Canel
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