On May 20, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed an indictment against former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, 94, for his alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue aircraft and the deaths of four pilots.
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Castro, who at the time was Cuba’s minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR)—placing him at the top of the military chain of command that decided to bring down the planes—faces charges of murder, conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, and destruction of aircraft in connection with the deaths of the four pilots 30 years ago.
The indictment also includes other Cuban military officials allegedly involved, including Emilio José Palacio Blanco, José Fidel Gual Barzaga, Raúl Simanca Cárdenas, Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez and Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez.
So what do the charges filed against Castro in the U.S. mean?
According to constitutional attorney Joseph Malouf, this is “under federal law an indictment that likely carries the possibility of life in prison or death under U.S. law.”
In this case, he said, “based on the process of presenting witnesses and evidence before a grand jury, the 12 members agreed there was enough for the case to move forward; (they) found that there was wrongdoing and a violation of the law.”
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Could Castro face a scenario similar to Nicolás Maduro’s?
“They have several things in common, but there’s an interesting difference: Castro is not Cuba’s president, and Maduro claimed to be Venezuela’s president, so there are certain defenses he’s using that Raúl Castro won’t be able to use,” Malouf said.
How difficult is it to build a case over something that happened 30 years ago?
“The level of proof needed to obtain this indictment is what’s called ‘probable cause’ (meaning) there’s a likelihood the person committed the crime,” Malouf explained.
But he noted that “in general, that’s easy to do at the beginning, but after 30, years you have witnesses who move away, who forget, evidence that wasn’t collected or preserved properly. There are several things that can come up in the defense of such an old case.”
This story was translated from English with the help of a generative AI tool. An NBC6 editor reviewed the translation.
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