The president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, questioned this Friday the formal charges brought by the United States Department of Justice against former Cuban president Raúl Castro for the downing of two aircraft from the organization Brothers to the Rescue in 1996.
"What sense does it make to accuse someone right now for something that happened 30 years ago?" he asked during his morning conference this Friday.
The representative framed the accusation within what she termed a historical "interventionist vision" of Washington, pointing out that "we must not forget that there is another intent behind what they do."
When asked about her government's stance, Sheinbaum responded with a single phrase: "Self-determination of peoples."
The Mexican president also referenced the memoirs of former president Miguel de la Madrid, in which it is stated that "the United States has always used the issue of drug trafficking as a pretext for interference."
Sheinbaum defended that her government does not seek confrontation with Washington and justified the pursuit of a good bilateral relationship by pointing out that there are 38 million Mexicans living in the United States.
The accusation that prompted Sheinbaum's statements was declassified last Wednesday by a federal grand jury from the Southern District of Florida and was originally filed on April 23, 2026.
The charges against Raúl Castro include conspiracy to murder U.S. citizens, destruction of aircraft, and four individual counts of murder for the deaths of Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales, all of whom were U.S. citizens or residents.
On February 24, 1996, MiG fighters from the Cuban Air Force shot down two civilian Cessna aircraft from Brothers to the Rescue over the Florida Straits. The International Civil Aviation Organization concluded in July of that year that the shootdown occurred outside of Cuban territorial airspace, approximately between nine and ten nautical miles beyond that limit.
The Secretary of State Marco Rubio described Raúl Castro as a "fugitive from U.S. justice," although the accusation has primarily symbolic significance: there is no extradition treaty between Cuba and the United States, and Castro has never set foot on U.S. soil.
In Cuba, the regime responded with a supportive march organized in Havana, with internal documents indicating that the mobilization was not spontaneous. Mariela Castro came to her father's defense and Díaz-Canel challenged Washington following the event in support of the former leader.
The accusation is based, among other evidence, on an audio recording from June 1996 in which Raúl Castro supposedly describes the order to shoot down the aircraft, an episode that the families of the victims have been demanding to be judged for three decades.
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