On Wednesday, May 20th, the US Department of Justice filed charges against six individuals, including former Cuban leader Raul Castro, in connection to a plane attack in 1996 that resulted in the deaths of three Americans.
According to a supplementary indictment released by the Department of Justice, Castro and five others are accused of involvement in the shooting down of two civilian planes belonging to the Miami-based exile group “Brother to the Rescue” by Cuban fighter jets in international waters in 1996. They are charged with one count of conspiring to murder US citizens, four counts of murder, and two counts of destruction of aircraft.
“Brother to the Rescue” is a civilian organization based in Miami, whose main mission is to conduct humanitarian flight missions over the Florida Straits to search for stranded Cuban immigrants.
The indictment alleges that Cuban intelligence officers infiltrated the organization in the early 1990s and relayed detailed information about their flight operations to the Cuban government. It is claimed that these reports were used by the military leadership to plan the actions on February 24, 1996.
According to the charges, on February 24, 1996, three planes from the “Brother to the Rescue” organization took off from the Opa-locka Airport in southern Florida on a planned humanitarian rescue flight mission heading south of the 24th parallel. Two of the planes – registered as N2456S and N5485S – were attacked and shot down in international airspace by Cuban military aircraft, resulting in the death of all four people on board.
Under the command of then-Cuban Minister of Defense Castro, two Cuban military fighter jets fired air-to-air missiles at the two unarmed US civilian Cessna planes, destroying them without warning while flying outside Cuban airspace.
The attack led to the deaths of four individuals, including three American citizens. The victims were Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr., Mario de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.
The indictment further alleges that in the weeks leading up to the attack, Cuban military pilots conducted training exercises to locate and intercept slow-flying civilian aircraft.
According to the Department of Justice, if convicted, the defendants could face the maximum penalties for conspiracy to murder and murder of US citizens, which include the death penalty or life imprisonment. Defendants Castro and former Cuban military officer Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez could face up to five years in prison for each count of aircraft destruction.
Another defendant, 65-year-old Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, who has recently relocated to Miami, was identified by Cuban-American residents as a former member of the Cuban Air Force and subsequently charged with making false statements in US immigration documents. He is currently in custody and is scheduled to be sentenced in a Central Florida court later this month.
Rodriguez was one of the MiG fighter pilots who carried out the mission that year.