Raúl Castro Indicted in U.S. Over Deaths of Four Cuban Exiles
The United States on Wednesday charged former Cuban President Raúl Castro over the 1996 shootdown of two small aircraft, marking the first time a senior figure from the communist regime has been accused before the courts of its neighboring enemy. Castro is accused of murder, conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens, and destruction of aircraft in connection with the deaths of four people. The charges represent a new escalation in Washington’s intense pressure campaign against the communist island, which has been under a U.S. embargo since 1962 and is now devastated by a severe economic crisis. Raúl Castro, now 94, was Cuba’s defense minister in 1996. “This is a political action, with no legal foundation, whose only purpose is to add to the file they are fabricating to justify the madness of a military aggression against Cuba,” Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel wrote on X. “The United States does not forget its citizens,” Attorney General Todd Blanche declared at a news conference ...