TALLAHASSEE - Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Monday the state has obtained a state arrest warrant for former Cuban leader Raul Castro on a charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue flights in 1996.
While the state doesn’t plan on immediately apprehending and jailing Castro, Uthmeier said the charges limit where he can travel, which could hinder where the 95-year-old seeks health care. Also, Uthmeier said the warrant matters to the families of those shot down.
“For over 30 years, government officials did nothing. They sat by and they did not enforce the rule of law,” Uthmeier said during a press conference at Florida International University in Miami.
“They did not bring the power of a justice system --- an American justice system --- a justice system that preaches when you break the law, when you commit murder, you must be held accountable,” Uthmeier continued. “For 30 years, government officials looked the other way; they sat at baseball games. They allowed the Cuban regime to become embedded in their offices in our political system.”
The baseball game reference alluded to the time in 2016 when then-President Barack Obama sat with Castro to watch the Tampa Bay Rays play an exhibition game against the Cuban national team in Havana. Obama attempted to thaw relations with communist-controlled Cuba in 2014 by easing restrictions on travel and remittances, but President Donald Trump reversed that policy when he first took office in 2017.
The charges follow an indictment unsealed in May charging Castro with the murder of the four men: Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos Costa, Mario de la Peña and Pablo Morales. Morales was a legal permanent resident of the U.S., while the other three were U.S. citizens.
In February 1996, a MiG-29 military aircraft belonging to the Cuban Air Force downed two unarmed civilian Brothers to the Rescue aircraft, killing four, about 10 miles outside Cuban territorial airspace.
The two pilots of the military aircraft and a general were charged with four counts of murder, two counts of destruction of aircraft and one count of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals in a 2003 U.S. indictment. But with little diplomatic relations between the nations, extradition has been nearly impossible.
The general, Rubén Martínez Puente, reportedly died in 2021.
But Raul Castro, the former first secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, is still alive. He was the minister of the armed forces when the Brothers to the Rescue flights were shot down.
