Justice Department Indicts 94-Year-Old Raúl Castro for the 1996 Shootdown That Killed Four Americans

Court filings unsealed on May 20 charged former Cuban president Raúl Castro, 94, with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft in connection with the Cuban military's 1996 shootdown of two civilian Brothers to the Rescue planes, which killed four people. The case was brought in federal court in South Florida under Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche. The indictment came 30 years after the incident and days before commemorations marking that anniversary.

Cuba has no extradition treaty with the United States, and reporting noted that Castro is unlikely ever to stand trial. The indictment landed weeks after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, who had been indicted on drug charges in 2020 — a sequence that raises the question of whether an unenforceable charge against a foreign head of state is a legal instrument or a diplomatic and political one, and what precedent it sets for how the United States expects its own officials to be treated abroad. It also arrived the same month the administration imposed sweeping new secondary sanctions on Cuba.

The charges remain pending. No arraignment is possible while Castro remains in Cuba.