The United States has indicted Raul Castro for his role in shooting down planes flown by emigres in 1996. The decision to indict the aging Cuban dictator is morally right and strategically sound. It is another welcome move in the Trump administration’s campaign to reassert American power, especially in the Western Hemisphere.
The Department of Justice announced criminal charges against the 94-year-old Castro on May 20 for his role as Cuba’s defense minister in overseeing the decision of his dictator brother, Fidel, to shoot down planes flown by Brothers to the Rescue, a humanitarian organization that aided refugees fleeing the Cuban dictatorship.
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The two Cessna 337 aircraft he destroyed were unarmed and were shot down outside Cuban airspace. All four occupants, including three American citizens, were killed. Federal prosecutors in Miami first began preparing to indict Castro in the 1990s, and although justice has been delayed, it should not be denied.
Castro was Fidel’s brother and the regime’s iron fist. He was one of a small group who seized power in 1959 and turned Cuba into an outpost for America’s enemies. Cuba has one of the most repressive security apparatuses in the world. Castro built it.
In 1961, the Soviets sent KGB operatives to set up Cuba’s fledgling spy service, the General Directorate of Intelligence, or DGI, now known as the DI. Raul Castro served as its point of contact and oversaw the creation of an intelligence agency that became infamous for its human rights abuses and its ability to penetrate foreign governments.
Following his 1987 defection to the United States, Florentino Aspillaga Lombard, a top official in the Castro regime, revealed that Cuba had dozens of double agents hidden in American society, from nonprofit organizations and universities to U.S. intelligence agencies themselves.
Michelle Van Cleave, the former counterintelligence director for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, called one of those assets, Ana Belen Montes, “one of the most damaging spies in U.S. history.”
A high-ranking DIA official, Montes spied for Cuba for 16 years before she was exposed in 2001. Montes, who was herself recruited by a Cuban asset in the U.S. State Department, gave the Castro regime reams of sensitive information and directly contributed to the death of a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier in El Salvador.
In 2024, a high-ranking American diplomat and former U.S. ambassador named Manuel Rocha pleaded guilty to spying for Cuba for 40 years.
These are the fruits of Castro’s labors, and they did not end with the Cold War.
Raul succeeded Fidel and became first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba in 2011. Under his leadership, Cuba once again became a forward operating base for Russian and Chinese spies.
Today, the Cuban security services that Raul created exercise de facto control over the country’s lucrative tourism industry and other sectors of the economy. They imprison and torture dissidents, steal from the Cuban people, and target American diplomats.
To its eternal shame, the Obama administration adopted a policy of appeasement toward the Cuban regime. In March 2016, Obama even attended a baseball game with Raul Castro and infamously did “the wave” with the dictator.
Thankfully, those days are over. The U.S. is once again asserting moral and political leadership, from its near abroad to shores far from its own.
Raul Castro should answer for his crimes. And the Trump administration should continue to apply pressure on the Cuban dictatorship he built.
Castro’s indictment should be seen in the context of an intensifying pressure campaign by Washington on the island tyranny. Although the U.S. military has not intercepted or boarded any ships trading with Cuba, the Trump administration has threatened high tariffs against nations that trade with Cuba and has stanched the flow of free oil from Venezuela, which was part of a mutual support arrangement by the Maduro and Castro regimes. This has exposed Cuba to the consequences of its Communist economic mismanagement and its regional and international malaise.
On May 20, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered a video message to ordinary Cubans. Speaking over the heads of their Cuban people’s oppressors, he told them that the only thing that stands between them and their dreams of prosperity and freedom is the kleptocratic and autocratic regime that has suppressed them for the past 67 years.
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At the same time, Poland has offered its services and experience after the collapse of the Soviet empire to help the U.S. transition Cuba from communist dictatorship to liberal, pro-Western democracy.
All this, and the indictment of Castro, turns the screws on the sclerotic tyranny in Cuba. Washington’s clear hope is for the regime to crumble without the need for conflict, and to rid the Western Hemisphere of the cancer of the Castro regime. It is doing its best to push the island nation in that direction. Its success is devoutly to be wished for, especially by the Cuban people.
