A HISTORIC INDICTMENT: It took 30 years, and comes as the Trump administration is ratcheting up the pressure on Cuba’s leadership to self-deport as the island nation’s economy is crashing and its people are facing a humanitarian crisis.
“Today, the United States announces a historic indictment, charging Raul Castro and five co-defendants for their roles in the February 24, 1996, shoot down of two brothers to the rescue planes,” U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quinones said at a press conference in Miami, where the indictment, returned by a grand jury in April, was unsealed. “According to the indictment, Raul Castro, then minister of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces, authorized and oversaw a military chain of command that ended with Cuban fighter jets firing air-to-air missiles at civilian aircraft over international waters. Those missiles destroyed the planes without warning and killed all aboard.”
