Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Wednesday that former Cuban President Raúl Castro has been indicted for his alleged role in the shootdown of two planes operated by the Florida-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue in 1996.
Three American citizens and a U.S. permanent resident — Mario de la Peña, Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales and Armando Alejandro Jr. — were killed when Cuban jets shot down the planes over the Florida Straits, the International Civil Aviation Organization says.
Blanche was met with applause when he made the announcement at a ceremony to honor the four killed three decades ago.
Castro, now 94, was his country’s defense minister at the time. He faces federal charges of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, destruction of an aircraft and four counts of murder. Five Cuban fighter jet pilots were also charged in the indictment, filed in federal court in Miami.
“Today’s indictment, while it does not bring back the murdered victims, it makes a statement,” Blanche said. “The United States government has not forgotten these innocent men who were shot out of the sky.”
When asked what steps the U.S. would be willing to take for Castro to face prosecution in the U.S., Blanche replied: “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.”
The acting attorney general deferred to the White House, Pentagon and secretary of state about “what could happen with Cuba.”
When asked by reporters later Wednesday, President Donald Trump said “We’re gonna see,” and added that the U.S. was ready “to help the families, the people.”
Audience members give a standing ovation as Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, center, speaks at an event where federal prosecutors announced charges against former Cuban President Raul Castro in the 1996 downing of civilian planes operated by Miami-based exiles, Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Miami. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Cuban president criticizes indictment
Shortly after the announcement was made, Cuba’s current president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, derided the charges as “a political maneuver, devoid of any legal foundation, aimed solely at padding the fabricated dossier they use to justify the folly of a military aggression” against his country.
Díaz-Canel was Castro’s handpicked successor after he retired as president in 2018. Castro, who remains a powerful figure in Cuba, had himself taken over leadership of the country from his late brother, Fidel Castro, more than a decade earlier.
In a social media post Wednesday, Díaz-Canel asserted that Cuba acted in self-defense “within its jurisdictional waters, following repeated and dangerous violations of our airspace by notorious terrorists—a fact of which the U.S. administration at the time was alerted on more than a dozen occasions.”
Prior to the day the planes were shot down, Brothers to the Rescue conducted unarmed flights to rescue or guide Cuban migrants at sea, as well as to support pro-democracy, anti-Castro regime movements on the island, including dropping leaflets, prosecutors wrote in the indictment.
“This latest overflight can only be seen as further taunting of the Cuban Government,” an FAA official told superiors a month before the shootdown, according to declassified government files obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
The official had warned that “Worst case scenario is that one of these days the Cubans will shoot down one of these planes.”
Months of increased tensions between the U.S. and Cuba
While the U.S. had loosened travel restrictions to Cuba under former President Barack Obama, the Trump administration has sought to ramp up the pressure on the island’s government in recent months through sanctions and an energy embargo.
Venezuela had supplied Cuba with fuel until its leader, Nicolás Maduro, was deposed by the U.S. in January. Later that month, Trump signed an executive order to impose tariffs on goods from any country that sold or provided oil to Cuba.
Trump has emphasized Cuba’s economic conditions and repeatedly suggested the country is on the verge of collapse, saying in March that he may have “the honor of taking Cuba.”
“Taking Cuba in some form … whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said at the time. “They’re a very weakened nation right now.”
Díaz-Canel, who is now serving his second term, warned in a social media post Monday of “a bloodbath with incalculable consequences” if the U.S. took military action against the country.
Wednesday’s announcement of Raúl Castro’s indictment comes just days after CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials, including Raúl Castro’s grandson, during a visit to the island.
Significance of May 20
On Wednesday morning, the Cuban president posted a message in honor of the anniversary of the date in 1902 recognized as Cuba’s independence day after centuries of Spanish rule followed by several years of American occupation.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, recorded his own, rare message in Spanish directed to the Cuban people.
In the video released Wednesday, Rubio blamed Cuba’s government for its people enduring “22 hours a day without electricity.”
He also offered “a new path between the U.S. and a new Cuba,” including $100 million in food and medicine, with the caveat that the Catholic Church or “or other trusted charitable groups” must distribute the aid.
A Brothers to the Rescue plane flies over The Democracy Movement flotilla at the twelve-mile limit north of Havana, Cuba, July 10, 1999. (AP Photo/Alan Diaz, File)
Reaction from Cuban-Americans in Congress
Several GOP members of Cuban descent — Reps. Mario Díaz-Balart, R-Fla.; Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla.; Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y.; and Maria Elvira Salazar, R-Fla. —– held a news conference Wednesday morning ahead of Blanche’s announcement.
Gimenez contended that the Brothers to the Rescue planes were looking for people in the water trying to make their way to the U.S. at the time they were shot down.
“These are just four of probably thousands of people that Raúl Castro has murdered,” Gimenez alleged. “You also have to think about the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who died in the Straits of Florida trying to reach freedom because of the conditions that were created on the island.”
Salazar pointed to the capture of Maduro in January as a warning sign for Raúl Castro.
“Look what Maduro did,” she said. “He thought that President Trump was not serious, and look where Maduro is now — in a federal prison in New York.”
Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, were seized from their home in Venezuela’s capital of Caracas in a middle-of-the-night military operation in January and brought to the U.S. to face federal drug trafficking charges
The Cuban government said that 32 of its citizens who had been guarding the Venezuelan leader were killed in the raid.
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