A federal grand jury has indicted 94-year-old former Cuban President Raúl Castro on murder charges in the 1996 downing of two small planes by a Cuban fighter jet while Castro was in charge of the country’s armed forces, U.S. authorities announced Wednesday.

The indictment marks the latest escalation in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Cuba, which gained traction after U.S. forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro — a crucial ally of Cuba’s communist government — in January. The subsequent cutoff of Venezuelan oil has left Cuba on the verge of a humanitarian crisis.

Castro was indicted on four counts of murder, one count of conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals and two counts of aircraft destruction, acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche announced at a news conference in Miami.

The prosecution of Castro, who succeeded his brother Fidel as the island nation’s leader, stems from Cuba’s shootdown of two planes on a humanitarian mission over the Florida Straits, an episode laden with significance for the politically powerful Cuban-American diaspora. The planes, operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue, were patrolling the waterway for refugees fleeing the island by raft when they were shot down by a Cuban MiG-29, killing four people.

“While it does not bring back the murdered victims, it makes a statement,” Blanche said. He was joined by U.S. Attorney Jason A. Reding Quiñones of the Southern District of Florida, a Cuban-American; FBI Deputy Director Christopher G. Raia; Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier; and Sen. Ashley Moody, R.-Florida.

The newly unsealed charges add Castro and five co-defendants —  Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez, Emilio José Palacio Blanco, José Fidel Gual Barzaga and Raul Simanca Cardenas — to an existing criminal case stemming from the 1996 attack. The original case, which was brought against three Cuban military officials, has been dormant since it was filed in 2003. The Cuban officials were never extradited to the U.S. to face criminal charges. 

“This is an indictment, in some ways, 30 years in the making,” Blanche said in response to a question about whether other members of the Castro regime will face charges related to the attack. “Whether there will be additional charges, whether additional defendants [are] charged, who knows, but this, investigations like this, is never over.”

U.S. officials have denounced the Cuban government, which denied wrongdoing, alleging the planes violated Cuban airspace and were part of an effort to unseat the communist regime.

The group’s founder, José Basulto, is a Cuban-born, CIA-trained veteran of the Bay of Pigs invasion who has acknowledged that his group’s planes had also been used to drop leaflets encouraging an uprising and has maintained he had the right to fly into Cuban airspace. As recently as Feb. 24, the 30th anniversary of the encounter, he called for Castro’s indictment over the downing of the planes.

Castro served as Cuba’s defense minister at the time. He formally succeeded Fidel Castro as president of Cuba’s Communist Party in 2008 and stayed in power until stepping down in 2018, though he has remained highly influential. Fidel Castro died in 2016.

President Donald Trump’s push for criminal accountability three decades later could lay the foundation for military intervention in the country, which Trump has floated as his approval ratings decline over his handling of the Iran war and the U.S. economy. 

U.S. threats of heavy tariffs on any country that exports oil to Cuba and the nation’s loss of critical Venezuelan oil since Maduro’s ouster have deepened an already catastrophic energy crisis, plunging the island and its people into dayslong blackouts and upending its economy. The Trump administration is seeking to use that leverage to force Cuba to implement major political and economic reforms. 

In a message marking Cuban Independence Day, hours before the Castro indictment came down, Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied that the U.S. is responsible for deepening the island’s energy crisis.

“The reason you are forced to survive 22 hours a day without electricity is not due to an oil ‘blockade’ by the U.S.,” Rubio said in a video message that was translated from Spanish to English by the State Department. “The real reason you don’t have electricity, fuel, or food is because those who control your country have plundered billions of dollars, but nothing has been used to help the people.”

The White House says Cuba can no longer be a safe haven for U.S. adversaries in the Western Hemisphere, but the specific changes Trump is seeking remain unclear. 

CIA Director John Ratcliffe traveled to Cuba to meet with Castro’s grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, a surrogate for his grandfather and a key point of contact between the U.S. and Cuba, hours before news broke of the Justice Department’s plan to indict the elder Castro. The plans were first reported by CBS News on May 15. 

Ratcliffe was sent to personally deliver Trump’s message that the U.S. is prepared to seriously engage on economic and security issues, but only if Cuba makes fundamental changes, a CIA official told MS NOW of the meeting. Cuba’s interior minister and intelligence head Lazaro Alvarez Casas also took part in the talks. 

The Trump administration said it has offered $100 million worth of aid to be distributed to the Cuban people through the Catholic Church and “other reliable independent humanitarian organizations.” Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez has denied the existence of the offer, calling it a “fable.”

According to the CIA official, Ratcliffe emphasized that Trump prefers dialogue but warned that the administration is ready to enforce redlines.

Trump has hinted that military action in Cuba is on the table, telling reporters in March at the Oval Office that he will have the “honor of taking Cuba” in some form. Questioned by a reporter on what that meant, Trump shrugged and said, “I think I can do anything I want with it.”

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