Former Cuban leader Raúl Castro was indicted on Wednesday on criminal charges for his alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of two planes operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue.
Read more Man accused of assaulting and filming burned girlfriend breaks down at hearing
The 94-year-old Castro was charged in the Southern District of Florida with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft. The superseding indictment, unsealed Wednesday, also names five other defendants.
Aside from Castro, five others, Emilio Jose Palacio Blanco, Jose Fidel Gual Barzaga, Raul Simanca Cardenas, Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez and Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez, are also facing charges.
Some of the defendants were pilots or wingmen of the Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets that fired the deadly missiles.
Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez was previously indicted last year for immigration fraud.
He faced charges of fraud and misuse of visas, permits, and other documents, and making a false statement to a federal agency, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida said in a news release.
According to the original indictment, Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez submitted an application for permanent residence to the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
What is Brothers to the Rescue?
Brothers to the Rescue is a group founded by Cuban exiles.
The group began operating in 1980 during the unexpected emigration of 125,000 Cubans to the United States.
Founded by emigré José Basulto, it aimed to help Cuban refugees in the Florida straits by dropping supplies from small planes and alerting the U.S. Coast Guard.
The monthslong crisis began after some Cubans protested the travel restrictions imposed by President Fidel Castro’s communist government, and Castro opened the port of Mariel to anyone who wanted to leave, filling the Florida straits with desperate people.
Read more 1 month after woman killed in Miramar, family demands police for answers
The Clinton administration changed immigration rules to discourage Cubans from heading north on rickety, makeshift boats. Meanwhile, Brothers to the Rescue, which is also known by its Spanish name Hermanos al Rescate, continued flying toward Cuban airspace and provoking Havana.
What happened in 1996?
On Feb. 24, 1996, missiles fired by Russian-made MiG-29 fighter jets downed two unarmed civilian Cessna planes just beyond Cuba’s airspace, according to an investigation conducted by the International Civil Aviation Organization. A third plane, carrying the organization’s leader, narrowly escaped.
The Cuban government warned the U.S. government for months that it was prepared to defend against what it considered deliberate provocations.
Carlos Alberto Costa, Armando Alejandre, Jr., Mario Manuel de la Peña, and Pablo Morales were killed in the shootdown.
U.S. counterintelligence caught five Cuban intelligence agents who had infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue. Two Cuban agents served long sentences, and three were only released from custody in the prisoner exchange that came before former President Barack Obama’s detente with Raúl Castro.
Two Cuban fighter jet pilots and their commanding officer have also been indicted in the shootdown— but have remained outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement — while living in Cuba.
Castro has been under U.S. criminal investigation before. In 1993, federal prosecutors in Miami considered charging him and several other senior Cuban military officials with cocaine trafficking based on testimony from Colombian traffickers that emerged in the drug trial of former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, the AP reported in 2006.
But an indictment never followed amid concerns about the witness’ credibility as well as fears that it could risk U.S. intelligence operations and derail a possible outreach to Cuba, then under consideration by President Bill Clinton.
NBC6 spoke to Basulto before Castro was charged.
“I’ve been wishing for that for a long time,” Basulto said. “I’ve been wishing for justice to be served, justice to be realized.”
Read more ‘Life in prison or the death penalty’: What the charges filed against Raúl Castro mean