On May 20, 2026, the Justice Department unsealed a seven-count criminal indictment charging 94-year-old Raúl Castro with murder, conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, and destruction of aircraft stemming from a 1996 attack that killed four men flying for the Cuban-American humanitarian group Brothers to the Rescue.
Cuban MiG-29 fighter jets fired missiles that destroyed two unarmed Cessna aircraft in international airspace over the Florida Straits on February 24, 1996. The attack killed Armando Alejandre Jr., Carlos Alberto Costa, Mario Manuel de la Peña and Pablo Morales — three U.S. citizens and one U.S. resident. Castro, who at the time led Cuba’s armed forces, is accused by U.S. prosecutors of orchestrating the strike. He now faces four individual murder counts, each carrying a maximum penalty of death or life imprisonment, and a federal warrant has been issued for his arrest.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche unveiled the charges Wednesday during a ceremony at Miami’s Freedom Tower honoring the victims killed 30 years ago. Castro and five others — six defendants total — are named in the indictment.
“The United States, and President Trump, does not, and will not, forget its citizens,” Blanche said.
Florida Republicans Drove the Push
Florida Republican Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart, Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos A. Gimenez, along with New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, held a news conference earlier Wednesday demanding the Justice Department file charges against Castro. The long-championed pressure campaign from Cuban-American lawmakers resonated with Trump Justice Department officials and senior figures including Vice President Vance.
May 20 carries deep significance in Cuba’s national history, and prosecutors deliberately selected Miami’s Freedom Tower — a historic symbol for Cuban exiles who fled to the United States — for the announcement. Relatives of the four victims received recognition three decades after the tragedy.
Mounting Pressure on Havana
The indictment arrives amid escalating tensions between Washington and the communist government. The Trump administration has imposed fresh sanctions on Cuba and a blockade on oil shipments to the island, fueling widespread blackouts and food shortages that have devastated ordinary Cubans.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed the Cuban people directly earlier Wednesday on Cuba’s independence day, announcing that “President Trump is offering a new path between the US and a new Cuba.” Rubio targeted GAESA — the sprawling Cuban military-run conglomerate controlling ports, fuel pumps and luxury hotels — as the primary culprit behind the country’s economic collapse. Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel responded by accusing the U.S. of lying and imposing collective punishment on Cuban families.
Díaz-Canel also condemned the indictment as “a political maneuver, devoid of any legal foundation,” claiming Washington seeks to “justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba.” He maintained Cuba acted in legitimate self-defense within its jurisdictional waters.
William LeoGrand, a Latin American politics expert at American University, said the administration’s approach appears designed “to increase the pressure gradually to the point where the Cuban government will give in and surrender at the bargaining table,” according to reporting on the charges.
An Uncertain Path Forward
Whether Castro will ever face trial in an American courtroom remains uncertain. The former president, who turns 95 later this year, relinquished Cuba’s presidency in April 2018 and his position as First Secretary of the Communist Party in April 2021. Havana still recognizes him as the surviving “leader of the Cuban Revolution” and brother of the late Fidel Castro. When reporters pressed Blanche on whether the U.S. would attempt to seize Castro, he responded only that “we expect he will show up here, by his own will or another way.”
That language carried particular weight in Havana, arriving just months after the Trump administration’s January 2026 military operation to seize Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro.
Castro once partnered with President Barack Obama during his 2009-2016 presidency to engineer a brief thaw in Washington-Havana relations. He now holds the distinction of being the highest-profile foreign leader charged by the Trump-era Justice Department. Whether the case reaches a U.S. court depends on factors extending well beyond the legal sphere — including the direction of an increasingly volatile standoff between the two governments, as Washington intensifies its campaign against Havana.
The indictment represents one of the most aggressive legal actions the United States has ever pursued against a sitting or former head of state in the Western Hemisphere — and demonstrates that three decades after four men died over the Florida Straits, the case remains unresolved.
