Trump administration prepares to seek Raúl Castro indictment as it pressures Cuba, AP sources say

The Jus­tice De­part­ment is prepar­ing to seek an in­dict­ment against for­mer Cuban Pres­i­dent Raúl Cas­tro, three peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Fri­day, as Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump threat­ens pos­si­ble mil­i­tary ac­tion against the com­mu­nist-run is­land.

One of the peo­ple told the AP that the po­ten­tial in­dict­ment is con­nect­ed to Cas­tro’s al­leged role in the 1996 shoot­down of four planes op­er­at­ed by the Mi­a­mi-based ex­ile group Broth­ers to the Res­cue. Cas­tro was de­fence min­is­ter at the time.

All three peo­ple spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty be­cause they weren’t au­tho­rized to dis­cuss an on­go­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion. The Cuban gov­ern­ment did not im­me­di­ate­ly com­ment on the po­ten­tial in­dict­ment, which was re­port­ed ear­li­er by CBS.

Any crim­i­nal charge against Cas­tro, which would need to be ap­proved by a grand ju­ry, would dra­mat­i­cal­ly es­ca­late ten­sions with Ha­vana. Fol­low­ing the U.S. mil­i­tary’s brazen cap­ture of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro in Jan­u­ary, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion quick­ly turned its at­ten­tion to its al­ly Cu­ba and or­dered an eco­nom­ic block­ade that choked off fu­el ship­ments to Cu­ba, lead­ing to se­vere black­outs across the is­land, in­creas­ing food in­se­cu­ri­ty and height­en­ing on­go­ing eco­nom­ic woes across the is­land.

But the U.S. war in Iran gave Cuban lead­ers some­thing of a re­prieve from U.S. talk of regime change.

Richard Fein­berg, a pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus spe­cial­iz­ing in Latin Amer­i­ca at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia-San Diego, said that any in­dict­ment of Cas­tro will play well with vot­ers in south Flori­da but is un­like­ly to per­suade mem­bers of the U.S. mil­i­tary to pur­sue a sec­ond war of choice — this time just 90 miles from Flori­da.

“There’s no easy Venezuela copy,” said Fein­berg. “There’s no clear line of suc­ces­sion and it’s hard to imag­ine regime change with­out U.S. boots on the ground.”

The AP re­port­ed in March that the U.S. At­tor­ney in Mi­a­mi had cre­at­ed a spe­cial work­ing group of pros­e­cu­tors and fed­er­al law en­force­ment to build cas­es against top Cuban of­fi­cials amid calls by sev­er­al south Flori­da Re­pub­li­cans to re­open its in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Cas­tro’s al­leged role in the 1996 shoot­down.

As Trump seeks to wind down the war in Iran, spec­u­la­tion has been grow­ing that he may soon turn his at­ten­tion back to Cu­ba af­ter pledg­ing ear­li­er this year a “friend­ly takeover” of the coun­try if its lead­er­ship didn’t open up its econ­o­my to Amer­i­can in­vest­ment and kick out U.S. ad­ver­saries.

CIA Di­rec­tor John Rat­cliffe met with Cuban of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing Cas­tro’s grand­son, dur­ing a high-lev­el vis­it to the is­land on Thurs­day.

Cas­tro, 94, took over as pres­i­dent from his ail­ing broth­er, Fi­del Cas­tro, in 2011, and then hand­ed pow­er to a hand­picked loy­al­ist, Miguel Díaz-Canel, in 2019.

While he large­ly has avoid­ed the spot­light since re­tir­ing in 2021 as head of the Cuban Com­mu­nist Par­ty, he is wide­ly be­lieved to wield pow­er be­hind the scenes, a fact un­der­scored by the promi­nence of his grand­son, Raúl Guiller­mo Ro­dríguez Cas­tro, who pre­vi­ous­ly met se­cret­ly with U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio.

Cu­ba’s shoot­down in 1996 of two Cess­na air­craft op­er­at­ed by the Broth­ers to the Res­cue was a wa­ter­shed mo­ment in decades of hos­til­i­ties be­tween the two coun­tries.

At the time, Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton had been cau­tious­ly ex­plor­ing ways to re­duce ten­sions with a Cold War ad­ver­sary but faced stiff op­po­si­tion from ex­iles who or­ga­nized pub­lic­i­ty-seek­ing fly­overs of Ha­vana, drop­ping an­ti-Cas­tro leaflets, and aid­ing Cuban rafters flee­ing eco­nom­ic de­pri­va­tion and sin­gle-par­ty rule.

The Cubans had warned the U.S. gov­ern­ment for months that it was pre­pared to de­fend against what it con­sid­ered de­lib­er­ate provo­ca­tions. But those calls went un­heed­ed and on Feb. 26, 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.

“With hind­sight, it ap­pears the Cas­tros’ mo­tive was to slow down the Clin­ton out­reach be­cause they need­ed the U.S. as an ex­ter­nal en­e­my to jus­ti­fy their na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty pos­ture,” said Richard Fien­berg, who worked on Cuban is­sues at the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil at the time.

They suc­ceed­ed be­yond their wildest dreams, said Fein­berg.

Short­ly af­ter the shoot­down, Con­gress passed what be­came known as the Helms-Bur­ton Act, which cod­i­fied a U.S. trade em­bar­go en­act­ed in 1962 and made it far more com­pli­cat­ed for suc­ces­sive U.S. pres­i­dents to en­gage with Cu­ba.

To date, the U.S. has con­vict­ed on­ly a sin­gle per­son of con­spir­a­cy to com­mit mur­der in con­nec­tion with the Broth­ers to the Res­cue shoot­down. Ger­ar­do Hernán­dez, the leader of a Cuban es­pi­onage ring dis­man­tled by the FBI in the 1990s, was sen­tenced to life in prison but was re­leased by Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma dur­ing a pris­on­er swap in 2014 as part of an at­tempt to nor­mal­ize re­la­tions with Cu­ba.

Two fight­er jet pi­lots and their com­mand­ing of­fi­cer have al­so been in­dict­ed but are out­side the reach of U.S. law en­force­ment while liv­ing in Cu­ba. —MI­A­MI (AP)

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Sto­ry by JOSHUA GOOD­MAN, ALAN­NA DURKIN RICH­ER and ER­IC TUCK­ER | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Eirc Tuck­er and Alan­na Durkin Rich­er re­port­ed from Wash­ing­ton.