Related videos:
Four Cuban-American congressmen held a press conference this Wednesday at the Capitol in Washington D.C. to demand formal legal actions against the former Cuban dictator Raúl Castro for his role in the downing of two civil aircraft belonging to the organization Brothers to the Rescue on February 24, 1996, which resulted in the deaths of four Cuban-Americans over international waters.
The representatives Carlos Giménez, Mario Díaz-Balart, María Elvira Salazar, and Nicole Malliotakis displayed on the podium photographs of the four victims with the caption "Murdered Feb. 24th, 1996 by order of Raul Castro," along with signs bearing the slogans #SOSCuba and Cuba Libre.
The conference at the Capitol took place alongside a historic announcement from the Department of Justice in Miami: on that same day, at the Freedom Tower, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, federal prosecutor Jason A. Reding Quiñones, FBI Deputy Director Christopher G. Raia, Senator Ashley Moody, and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced the federal criminal charges against Castro.
Federal sources had confirmed to NBC News that a grand jury had been hearing evidence and that the formal indictment had already been filed before the public act.
The chosen date was not casual: May 20 is Cuba's Independence Day, which imbues the announcement with significant political symbolism.
The four victims of the crash were Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.
The attack occurred when MiG-29 fighters from the Cuban Revolutionary Air Force destroyed two unarmed civilian Cessna 337 Skymaster airplanes in international waters, between nine and ten nautical miles outside Cuban airspace, according to the International Civil Aviation Organization, which concluded that the attack violated international law.
The central evidence of the case is a recording from June 1996, published in 2006 by journalist Wilfredo Cancio in El Nuevo Herald, in which Castro describes the order to shoot down the planes.
"I said to try to take them down over the territory, but they would enter Havana and leave... Well, take them down at sea when they show up," is heard from the dictator Raúl Castro.
Declassified FBI documents—over 10,000 pages—also reveal the existence of an "Operation Venice," planned since February 13, 1996, which suggests premeditation of the attack.
In November 2025, the Department of Justice had already arrested former Cuban pilot Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez, a 64-year-old retired colonel, accused of immigration fraud for concealing his involvement in the shootdown.
On May 15, Trump avoided confirming or denying the accusation aboard Air Force One, merely stating: “I will let the Department of Justice speak.”
The accusation, however, has a primarily symbolic significance: Raúl Castro, at 94 years, has never set foot on American soil, and there is no extradition treaty between Cuba and the U.S.
José Basulto, founder of Brothers to the Rescue, whose plane managed to escape the attack that day, summed up the feeling of decades of waiting: "I have wished for this for a long time. I have wished for justice to be done, for justice to become a reality."
Filed under: