A voice recording from June 1996, in which Raúl Castro admits to having ordered the downing of the planes from Brothers to the Rescue, is today the central element of the formal charge that the Federal Prosecutor's Office for the Southern District of Florida is preparing against the former Cuban leader for the murder of four Cuban Americans over three decades ago.
The audio, lasting 11 minutes and 32 seconds, was recorded four months after the downing, during a meeting of Castro with Cuban journalists from the island, when he held the position of Minister of Defense and head of the Revolutionary Armed Forces.
In the recording, Castro states: “I used to say to try to take them down over the territory, but they would enter Havana and leave. Well, take them down in the sea when they show up; and do not consult those who have the powers.”
It was the Cuban journalist Wilfredo Cancio, based in Miami and then a reporter on Cuban affairs for El Nuevo Herald, who obtained that audio and published it on August 20, 2006, as an exclusive that captured the attention of media worldwide.
Cancio verified the authenticity of the recording with several specialists and with Alcibiades Hidalgo, former personal secretary of Castro, who confirmed that it was his voice.
"The change brought by that recording is that there is now a voice recording of Raúl Castro taking full responsibility," Cancio stated to El País. The accusation, if substantiated, would be "an act of historic justice," he added.
The event under investigation occurred on February 24, 1996, between 3:21 and 3:27 PM, when MiG fighter jets from the Cuban Air Force shot down two Cessna C-337 planes from Brothers to the Rescue over international waters in the Florida Straits.
Armando Alejandre Jr. (45 years), Carlos Costa (29), Mario de la Peña (24), and Pablo Morales (29), all Cuban-American volunteers searching for rafters at sea, died. Their bodies were never recovered.
A third plane, carrying Arnaldo Iglesias among others, managed to escape. Today, at 88 years old, Iglesias recalls that day with a clarity that time has not erased: "I remember the voices on the radio, the uncertainty, and then the silence. A silence that is hard to explain."
"I don't know if we will see Raúl Castro in an American court," Iglesias told El País. "But I would like full acknowledgment of the truth. It should be established that four men were killed by a dictatorship during a humanitarian mission."
The formal accusation will be presented this Wednesday at the Freedom Tower in Miami, coinciding with Cuba's Independence Day, after being approved by a federal grand jury.
The case has accumulated nearly three decades of impunity. Federal Judge James Lawrence King has already ruled that the Cuban government acted "in an outrageous disregard for international law and basic human rights" by "murdering four human beings in international airspace".
Cuba refused to compensate the families, but Washington authorized the transfer of 93 million dollars in frozen Cuban assets.
The accusation is part of the Trump administration's maximum pressure policy against the Cuban regime, which includes an almost five-month oil embargo and a coordinated legal campaign. In March 2026, the Florida Attorney General had reopened the criminal investigation into the case.
Raúl Castro Ruz will turn 95 years old in June. There is no extradition treaty between Cuba and the United States, but journalist Cancio emphasized that the announcement on May 20 "is also a nod to the Cuban community": thirty years later, the eleven-minute recording that no one expected to exist could become the evidence that follows Castro until the end of his life.
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