Raúl Castro (right) with Barack Obama in Havana, 2016. (Image: Pete Souza / Wikimedia Commons — Public domain)
Florida has issued a state arrest warrant for former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, charging the 95-year-old with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the 1996 shootdown of two civilian planes that killed four South Florida men.
State Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the no-bond warrant Monday at Florida International University's College of Law in Miami. The warrant, signed by Chief Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit in Miami-Dade County, was secured by Uthmeier's Office of Statewide Prosecution and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
"The families have been hurting for so many years," Uthmeier said at the press conference. "They've been waiting for justice. They've been waiting for another step towards accountability." In a written statement, he added: "Raúl Castro ordered the murder of four Floridians in cold blood, and Florida will never stop pursuing accountability for that communist conspiracy."
The charges stem from February 24, 1996, when Cuban MiG fighter jets shot down two unarmed civilian aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Miami-based exile group that flew humanitarian missions over the Florida Straits to locate Cuban refugees. The planes were flying in international waters when they were destroyed. Four men were killed: Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña, and Armando Alejandre Jr.
Castro was Cuba's defense minister and first vice president at the time. According to the affidavit supporting the warrant, he was a final decision-maker in the chain of command that authorized the shootdown. Investigators allege the regime's foreign intelligence service planned the attack and that the order traveled up the chain of command to Raúl Castro and his brother, then-leader Fidel Castro.
The state case runs parallel to a federal prosecution. Federal prosecutors indicted Castro and five others in May on charges including four counts of murder, two counts of destruction of aircraft, and conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. Uthmeier said his office will continue cooperating with Jason A. Reding Quiñones, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
The announcement lands two weeks before the November 3 general elections, in which the Cuban American vote is expected to be critical in Florida. The 1996 shootdown has long reverberated through South Florida's Cuban American community, and the case remains one of the most politically charged episodes in U.S.-Cuba relations.
Whether the 95-year-old former leader will ever face a courtroom is uncertain — Cuba does not extradite its former heads of state, and Castro remains in Cuba. But Florida officials framed the warrant as a permanent marker. "Thirty years later, we are still fighting for justice," Uthmeier said, naming each of the four victims.