A representative from the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Relations stated this week that the United States government did not act out of negligence but rather deliberately, by allowing the flights of Brothers to the Rescue, which culminated in the shooting down on February 24, 1996, in which four American citizens lost their lives.
Miguel Ángel Moreno Carpio, from the International Justice Directorate of the Cuban Foreign Ministry, made these statements during the Cuban Roundtable, in the context of the federal indictment issued by the Justice Department of the Trump administration against Raúl Castro and five former Cuban military officials, declassified on May 20 in Miami.
"The government of the United States was warned multiple times by the Cuban side, but it was also warned by its own internal structures," stated Moreno Carpio.
The official cited as central evidence a recently declassified document published by the National Security Archive of George Washington University, which includes records from the FAA and the White House.
"A declassified document has been revealed these days stating precisely that they anticipated those planes would be shot down due to continuous violations of Cuban airspace. And so it was. An alert was sent to the White House. An alert was directly issued to the President of the United States," he noted.
Among the declassified documents released on May 19 is an email sent on the evening of February 23, 1996, by Richard Nuccio, the White House official responsible for Cuba, to Sandy Berger, National Security Advisor, warning that José Basulto was planning to fly the next day and that the tension could lead Cuba to "tilt the scale towards an attempt to shoot down or force the landing of the aircraft."
Nuccio tried to have the FAA block those flights, but the agency refused and only agreed to warn Basulto again about the risk of violating Cuban airspace.
A document from August 1995 from the Clinton administration noted as a "great concern" the possibility that an aircraft from Brothers to the Rescue could be shot down, and officials from the State Department had expressed that "someday the Cubans are going to shoot down one of those planes."
According to Moreno Carpio, this background dismisses the possibility that Washington could invoke the concept of "due diligence," which implies recklessness or negligence.
"Due diligence borders on recklessness and negligence. Here we are referring to someone who acts intentionally because their territory allows it to be used for that purpose. They prepared the ground. They said, it's time to get our ducks in a row for when the time comes to justify. That time arrived starting on February 24," the official stated.
The Cuban regime also argues that the flights had a broader political objective. "What they intended to do on that February 24, 1996, and in the repeated flights prior to Cuba, was to provoke an incident that would lead to a military escalation against our country, and later President Clinton would acknowledge that they presented him with two options: either a military attack against Cuba or signing the Helms-Burton Act," Moreno Carpio added.
The federal charges against Raúl Castro include conspiracy to assassinate U.S. citizens, destruction of aircraft, and four counts of murder for the deaths of Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.
The indictment was returned by a federal grand jury in Miami on April 23, 2026 and could result in life imprisonment for the 94-year-old former dictator.
Cuba rejects the charges as "absolutely fraudulent and illegitimate" and describes them as a political act, while the regime has called for open forums throughout the country from this Saturday until June 3rd, the date when Raúl Castro will turn 95 years old.
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