Former Cuban chief Raul Castro has been indicted for his alleged function in the capturing down of two civilian planes 30 years in the past that killed three Americans and despatched US-Cuba relations plunging.
Here’s what you want to find out about the lethal incident.
In the Nineties, a Miami-based volunteer group known as Brothers to the Rescue carried out common flights making an attempt to discover and help Cubans making an attempt to sail to the US.
On one such mission, on February 24, 1996, Cuban forces shot down two of their planes close to to the Cuban coast, destroying them with heat-seeking missiles, in accordance to Congress paperwork. Three American residents and one resident of the US had been killed. A 3rd Brothers plane escaped.
In the rapid aftermath of the incident, the Cuban authorities accused Brothers to the Rescue of participating in covert operations towards the regime – allegations the US swiftly denied.
According to the US authorities, the Brothers to the Rescue planes had been unarmed and the volunteers aboard posed no menace to the Cuban authorities, army or inhabitants.
On Tuesday, Cuba’s embassy in the US took to X saying the “violations of Cuban airspace” weren’t remoted incidents however amongst “more than 25 serious, deliberate and systematic violations.”
“These were not miscalculations, but rather a continuous campaign that jeopardized international aeronautical safety,” the embassy mentioned.
Brothers to the Rescue, which is now not lively, has in the previous described itself as a pro-democracy humanitarian group devoted to serving to Cuban folks free themselves from dictatorship, utilizing nonviolent means.
The volunteer activist group was based in May 1991 by anti-regime Cuban exile Jose Basulto, who was on the airplane that escaped, and made up of Cuban American pilots flying out of Miami space airports. Its inception got here after Cuban teenager Gregoria Perez Ricardo, who fled the communist-run island, died of extreme dehydration whereas crossing the Florida Straits, in accordance to the group.
They additionally dropped leaflets over Cuba criticizing the communist authorities of Fidel Castro, the nation’s former revolutionary chief who made Cuba the first Communist nation in the Western Hemisphere – and performed a central function in the Cold War.
During the Fidel Castro dictatorship, arbitrary arrests, brutal crackdowns on dissent, beatings, intimidation, and surveillance had been frequent. Many of these making an attempt to flee the island – some on makeshift rafts – wouldn’t survive the perilous journey throughout the Florida Straits.
The US authorities swiftly condemned the capturing down of the two planes and simply days later, President Bill Clinton signed the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity (LIBERTAD) Act, often known as the Helms-Burton Act.
The act tightened sanctions on Cuba and stays the foundation of US embargos on the nation. The legislation known as for an act of Congress to raise any half of the embargo towards Cuba. Visas can be denied to anybody utilizing or taking advantage of Cuban property – and to Cuban authorities staff and communist occasion members, beneath the legislation.
The act additionally prohibited the US president from eradicating commerce restrictions on the Caribbean nation till it legalizes political exercise and commits to free and honest elections. It additionally prevented the US from lifting sanctions whereas Fidel Castro or his brother and successor Raul Castro had been half of Cuba’s authorities.
“The response chosen by Fidel Castro, the use of lethal force, was completely inappropriate to the situation presented to the Cuban government, making such actions a blatant and barbaric violation of international law and tantamount to cold-blooded murder,” Congress mentioned at the time, calling it a “premeditated act” that got here after a significant crackdown on a coalition of pro-democracy rights teams on the island.
The 1996 act additionally enabled the US president – beneath sure situations – to assist and help NGOs and people in democracy-building efforts.
US Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright condemned the Cuban pilots who had used the Spanish phrase for testicles on their radios to congratulate themselves after capturing down the planes. “Frankly, this is not cojones,” she mentioned. “This is cowardice.”
Fidel Castro took responsibility for the incident, saying he gave orders to his army to shoot down planes violating Cuba airspace. The US insists the planes had been downed in worldwide airspace.
Cuban consultant to the UN Security Council at the time Bruno Rodriguez Parilla, asserted that Cuba had proof the two plane had been in the nation’s airspace and that prior to capturing them down, Cuban authorities had issued warnings to them, reminiscent of rocking their wings, which he mentioned had been ignored.
Days after the shootdown, then-Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina Gonzalez informed the UN General Assembly that Brothers to the Rescue had plans to hurt Cuba together with sabotaging an oil refinery and focusing on Cuban leaders.
“Today we are asking this assembly if the sovereign right to defend the borders and national security of countries is only a prerogative of the powerful and not of poor and small countries,” he mentioned.
The FBI later discovered that Cuban brokers had infiltrated exile teams and fed info again to the Cuban authorities, together with about the Brothers to the Rescue’s ill-fated February 24 mission. Five Cuban spies had been arrested in 1998 and later convicted on fees that they had spied on outstanding Cuban-American exile leaders and US army bases.
During his presidency US President Barack Obama launched them in a deal to restore relations with Cuba, with Havana releasing State Department contractor Alan Gross.
Watch: 1996 interview with Juan Pablo Roque after Brothers to the Rescue shootdown
One member of the so-called “Wasp Network” of Cuban spies was by no means caught, nonetheless. Juan Pablo Roque, a former Cuban defector, left Florida for Havana sooner or later earlier than the shootdown. Soon after the incident, Roque reappeared in Cuba on NCS, insisting that he had infiltrated anti-Castro teams – together with Brothers to the Rescue – on behalf of the FBI.
He insisted he had nothing to do with the shootdown, however claimed he had the truth is tried to warn Basulto and US authorities that the pilots had been at risk.
“I warned the US government they were going to shoot them down,” Roque informed NCS. “It was madness. I did everything to avoid the deaths of my four comrades but nobody paid attention.”
But the FBI denied that Roque warned them of plans for the assault.
Roque certainly had been an FBI informant. Yet US authorities alleged that he was additionally a double agent for Cuba, feeding info to Havana as well as to his work for the federal authorities.
Roque was later indicted for failing to register as a overseas agent of Cuba and conspiring to defraud the US authorities. He died, unapprehended, in Havana in November 2025.
Cuban exiles and regime critics like Basulto had been fast to name for justice, demanding Fidel Castro be indicted following the incident. That sentiment amongst many Cuban-Americans hasn’t modified, although Fidel Castro died in 2016.
Cuban-American Republican lawmakers have since pushed the Justice Department to deliver fees towards Raul Castro. In a February letter to then-Attorney General Pam Bondi, lawmakers together with Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart urged the Justice Department to prosecute Raul Castro, citing proof together with studies that there’s a recording of radio visitors that signifies he ordered the shoot-down.
Those calls for got here to fruition on May 20, when the US unsealed an indictment towards Castro, charging him with homicide, conspiracy to kill US nationals and destruction of an plane. Among the different Cubans indicted by the Justice Department together with Castro had been the airmen allegedly concerned in the shootdown.
But some Cubans stand behind their authorities’s actions from a long time in the past, insisting it was a matter of safeguarding nationwide safety – and that Raul Castro shouldn’t be punished for it.
“I believe that was an invasion, however you look at it, and we have to defend ourselves because if any plane had flown past the Twin Towers, and they’d known it was going to be sabotaged, they would have shot it down,” Havana resident Eliecer Diaz informed Reuters. “I think that’s only logical. Cuba did the right thing.”