Former Cuban leader Raúl Castro charged with murder in the United States

A decades-old confrontation between Washington and Havana took a dramatic new turn after former Cuban president Raúl Castro was charged in the United States with murder, sharply intensifying pressure on the island’s communist leadership.

The indictment was filed on 23 April in federal court in Miami, Florida.

According to the court documents, the 94-year-old faces one count of conspiracy to kill US nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft.

Five other individuals are also listed as defendants in the case.

“My message today is clear: The United States and President Trump does not and will not forget its citizens,” Mr Blanche said, drawing applause from a packed auditorium of government officials and Cuban Americans.

Cuba’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Raúl Castro was last seen in public in Cuba earlier this month, and there is no sign he has left the country or that the government would permit his extradition.

The charges arrive as US President Donald Trump ramps up calls for regime change on the Caribbean island, where communists have ruled since his late brother Fidel Castro led the 1959 revolution.

Earlier today, Mr Trump called Cuba a “rogue state harbouring hostile foreign military” and said his administration’s actions formed part of a wider push to expand US influence across the Western Hemisphere.

“From the shores of Havana to the banks of the Panama Canal, we will drive out the forces of lawlessness and crime and foreign encroachment,” Mr Trump said during a Coast Guard Academy event in New London, Connecticut.

On Monday, Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the island posed no threat.

The indictment drives relations between the longtime Cold War foes to a fresh low.

After seizing power, Fidel Castro aligned Cuba with the Soviet Union and nationalised US-owned businesses and properties.

Washington has since maintained an economic embargo on the island nation of about 10 million people.

The two countries have held intermittent talks over the years. Relations thawed briefly during the second term of former president Barack Obama, a Democrat, but President Trump, a Republican, has adopted a far more confrontational stance.

Acting US Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the charges against Raúl Castro

Members of Miami’s large Cuban American community gathered outside the city’s Freedom Tower ahead of the ceremony honouring the victims of the 1996 incident.

The event was held on the anniversary of the end of a four-year US military occupation of Cuba on 20 May 1902, which came after centuries of Spanish colonial rule.

Cuba’s government does not recognise that date as the country’s independence day, saying the island remained subordinate to Washington until the 1959 revolution.

In a social media post, President Diaz-Canel said 20 May represented “intervention, interference, dispossession, frustration” in Cuban history.

Under Mr Trump, the US has effectively tightened a blockade on the island by threatening sanctions on countries that supply it with fuel, a move that has triggered power outages and deepened Cuba’s worst crisis in decades.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered $100 million (€86m) in aid to Cuba while blaming its leaders for shortages of electricity, food and fuel.

The island’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodriguez, called the move cynical and pointed to the “devastating effect” of the economic blockade.

Trump said Cuba was ‘next’

Born in 1931, Raúl Castro played a central role alongside his older brother in the guerrilla campaign that overthrew US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.

He helped repel the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and then served for decades as defence minister.

Raúl took over from his brother as president in 2008 and stepped down in 2018, though he remains an influential behind-the-scenes figure in Cuban politics.

He was serving as defence minister when the 1996 incident took place.

The two small aircraft that were shot down were operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based group of Cuban exile pilots who said they were searching for Cuban rafters fleeing the island.

All four men on board were killed. Their portraits stood behind Mr Blanche as he spoke at Miami’s Freedom Tower, which served as a refugee centre for Cubans in the 1960s.

The Cuban government has maintained that the strike was a legitimate response to aircraft violating its airspace.

Fidel Castro said the island’s military had acted under “standing orders” to bring down planes entering that airspace.

He said that Raúl Castro did ⁠not issue a specific order to shoot down the planes.

The US denounced the attack and responded with sanctions.

The Department of Justice charged three Cuban military officers in 2003, but they were never extradited.

The International Civil Aviation Organization later found that the incident occurred over international waters.

Bringing a criminal case against a US adversary such as Raúl Castro echoes the earlier drug-trafficking indictment of imprisoned former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, a Cuban ally.

The Trump administration pointed to that indictment to justify the 3 January US military raid on Caracas in which Mr Maduro was captured and taken to New York to face the charges.

He has pleaded not guilty.

In March, President Trump warned that Cuba was “next” after Venezuela.

President Diaz-Canel said on Monday that any US military action against Cuba would trigger a “bloodbath”.