The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba, Carlos Fernández de Cossío, warned this Wednesday that "any attempt to use this excuse for an action against these comrades within Cuba will face fierce resistance from the Cuban people," in response to the criminal charges filed by the U.S. Department of Justice against Raúl Castro and five Cuban military personnel for the downing of two planes from the organization Hermanos al Rescate on February 24, 1996.
Fernández de Cossío made the statements on the Mesa Redonda, the official news program of Cuban television, to which he was invited alongside other specialists and journalists to analyze what the program itself described as "the judicial and political farce being staged in the U.S. against Army General Raúl Castro."
The deputy minister called the accusation "fraudulent" and stated that it "lacks legal basis, political foundation, and moral justification."
He also described it as "a rogue act" within an "increasingly aggressive escalation" by Washington against Cuba throughout 2026, linking it to what he called a "clique" of Cuban exiles with "disproportionate" influence over the Trump administration, thanks to what he termed "the corrupt nature of the American political system."
Fernández de Cossío also warned about what he considered an additional dimension of the accusation: "It is known that the United States has a dark practice of using accusations like this to act militarily against sovereign states," he stated, suggesting that the legal charge could be a pretext for intervention.
To justify the 1996 shootdown, the Deputy Minister argued that Cuba warned the State Department and the Federal Aviation Administration on 25 occasions about the air incursions by Brothers to the Rescue between 1994 and 1996, and that on January 15 of that year, it issued a public statement warning that any unauthorized aircraft "would be intercepted and, if necessary, neutralized."
He also stated that the U.S. government —including the State Department, the National Security Council, and the White House— was aware the night before that the flight was going to take place and "made the decision not to act," which, in his opinion, implies "complicity" in the events.
However, the International Civil Aviation Organization concluded in July 1996 that the shootdown occurred between nine and ten nautical miles outside of Cuban territorial airspace, meaning in international airspace, which directly contradicts the sovereignty argument put forward by the regime.
The charges were presented to a federal grand jury in Miami on April 23 and declassified on May 20, and include charges of conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens, destruction of civilian aircraft, and four individual counts of homicide for the deaths of Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.
Alongside Raúl Castro, five other Cuban military members were accused: Lorenzo Alberto Pérez-Pérez, Emilio José Palacio Blanco, José Fidel Gual Barzaga, Raúl Simanca Cárdenas, and Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez.
Other regime leaders also rejected the accusation. President Miguel Díaz-Canel described it as a "political action, with no legal basis," while Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz defended Raúl Castro and accused the U.S. of staging a farce.
The accusation comes amid a sustained escalation of bilateral tensions during May 2026: Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new sanctions against GAESA, the military conglomerate that controls between 40% and 70% of the formal Cuban economy, on May 7; on May 12, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared before Congress that Cuba is a "threat to national security"; and on May 17, a report from Axios based on classified intelligence indicated that Cuba has acquired over 300 military drones from Russia and Iran since 2023.
Raúl Castro is 94 years old, has never set foot on U.S. soil, and there is no extradition treaty between the two countries, so the practical effect of the accusation is primarily political and symbolic.
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