The state of Florida has issued a state arrest warrant with no bail for Raúl Castro, aged 95, for conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, in connection with the shooting down of two planes from Hermanos al Rescate in 1996, as reported on Monday by the network WSVN.
The order was signed on October 16 by Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan, President of the Eleventh Judicial Circuit of Florida, following an investigation by the state's Department of Law Enforcement.
This Monday, Florida's Attorney General, James Uthmeier, announced it publicly at a press conference held at Florida International University (FIU), alongside Governor Ron DeSantis.
The document states that, if Castro were to be arrested outside of the state, the authorities in Florida are empowered to seek his full extradition.
The jurisdictional basis of the order rests on the activities of two Cuban agents infiltrated in Brothers to the Rescue who operated in Miami and at the Naval Air Station in Key West between 1995 and February 1996.
According to the sworn statement, those spies transmitted information about the group's flights to Cuban authorities and monitored military facilities on Floridian soil. Additionally, the network instructed its infiltrators not to fly with the organization between February 24 and 27, 1996, and one of them left Florida on February 23—one day before the attack—to return to Cuba.
The authorities deemed that these activities, carried out in Floridian territory, constitute probable cause sufficient to establish state jurisdiction and to support the claim that Castro gave the orders for the conspiracy.
This legal action is independent of the federal charges filed by the Department of Justice on May 20, 2026, which accused Castro and five other former Cuban military members of seven charges: four counts of individual murder, two counts of aircraft destruction, and one count of conspiracy to kill American citizens.
Since that date, Castro is considered a fugitive from federal justice for failing to appear before any court.
On February 24, 1996, MiG fighters of the Cuban Air Force shot down two Cessna 337 aircraft from Brothers to the Rescue over international waters of the Florida Straits, killing Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales. Their bodies were never recovered.
The central evidence against Castro includes an audio recording from June 1996, released in 2006, in which the then Minister of the Armed Forces describes the order to shoot down in his own words: "Take them down in the sea when they appear; and do not consult those who have the authority".
The only defendant currently in U.S. custody is Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez, a former lieutenant colonel of the Cuban Air Force, transferred to Miami in June 2026, who pleaded not guilty on the 23rd of that month.
The absence of an extradition treaty between Cuba and the United States currently hinders the practical execution of both orders while Castro remains on the island, although the Trump administration has indicated that it does not rule out unconventional mechanisms to bring him to justice.
Relatives of the victims received the announcement with restrained relief. "Justice has been served. Not completely, but it's a form of justice," one of them stated. Another added, "My father fought for a free Cuba. That was the most important thing to him. It was all that mattered to him."
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