Raúl Castro’s confession that could lead to a trial in the US: ‘Knock them down into the sea’

The confession came almost four months after the planes exploded over the Caribbean Sea: “I told them to try to knock them down over [Cuban] territory, but they would enter Havana and leave.” It was June 1996, and the 11-minute, 32-second statement was recorded and later transferred to an old compact disc. “Of course, with one of those missiles, air-to-air, what comes down is a ball of fire that will fall on the city.” The man speaking didn’t know then that he was revealing the crime that would haunt him for the rest of his life: the downing of two planes belonging to the Brothers to the Rescue non-profit organization. “Well, knock them down into the sea when they reappear; and don’t consult those who have the authority.” The speaker was Raúl Castro. The U.S. Department of Justice now intends to prosecute him for the deaths of the four crew members, more than three decades ago.

On May 20, an unprecedented event could take place in the mecca of Cuban exiles: the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida is set to formally present its indictment against Castro in a ceremony at the Freedom Tower in Miami. This initiative comes amid the Trump administration’s siege against the regime on the island. Since the Republican president announced in January that Cuba was “next,” following the incursion into Venezuela to arrest Nicolás Maduro, Cubans have been watching closely for any sign that might shed light on Trump’s uncertain plans.

It’s hard for people to imagine a figure like Castro, now 94, being transferred to a maximum-security prison in the United States so near the end of his life. He’s no longer the powerful man who can sit down and talk with the United States, as he did during Barack Obama’s presidency in 2016. Now he sends his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, to carry on his legacy. Time, however, hasn’t lessened his debt, nor has old age granted him any special treatment among the exile community. “I don’t know if we’ll ever see Raúl Castro before a U.S. court,” says Arnaldo Iglesias, 88, in his Miami home. “But I would like the full recognition of the truth. I want it established that four men were murdered by a dictatorship during a humanitarian mission.”

Iglesias’ memory has not erased the events of that February 24, 1996, when the two Cessna C-337 planes carrying his Brothers to the Rescue comrades were shot down between 3:21 p.m. and 3:27 p.m. by Cuban Air Force MiG fighter jets. A third plane, carrying Iglesias, managed to escape. “I remember the voices on the radio, the uncertainty, and then the silence. A silence that defies explanation.”

A week earlier, Iglesias had seen his friends all smiles in Nassau, Bahamas, during a Brothers to the Rescue humanitarian mission. The group was conducting search and rescue operations in the Florida Straits, with exiles and the help of the U.S. Coast Guard, to assist those who took to the sea from Cuba, the so-called rafters. Iglesias never saw Armando Alejandre, 45, Carlos Costa, 29, Mario de la Peña, 24, or Pablo Morales, 29, again. He still remembers details about each of them, as if time hasn’t taken them away.

“Carlos Costa had a special calmness. Mario de la Peña was an enthusiastic young man and a consummate environmentalist. Pablo Morales was a rafter rescued by us, helping others to achieve the freedom he already enjoyed, and Armando Alejandre Jr., an exemplary Cuban,” he says. “Thirty years later, I still think about them almost every day.”

The survivors, the families of the victims, and the exile community that has for years mourned the four Brothers to the Rescue crew members have patiently waited for justice to be served against the Castro regime. Nothing, so far, has happened. Five administrations have come and gone in the White House without a response, despite the fact that it has been proven the planes were shot down over international waters, not Cuban airspace, and that the U.S. Congress condemned the events on March 12, 1996. That year, Judge James Lawrence King ruled that the Castro regime had murdered “four human beings in international airspace over the Florida Straits.” Cuba refused to compensate the victims’ families, but the United States did so with $93 million in frozen Cuban government assets.

After Trump’s first term, during which he barely paid any attention to Cuba, perhaps no one in Havana expected him to now dedicate so much time to the island. Events indicate that Washington is determined to fight back: a nearly five-month-long oil embargo has been compounded by threats, negotiations, visits from officials, $100 million in humanitarian aid, and the revelation that Castro could face prosecution in U.S. courts. There is one piece of evidence now available to federal judges that forms the cornerstone of the ongoing case: a voice recording in which Raúl Castro admits that he gave the order to shoot down the planes.

Brothers to the Rescue at the center of politics

That audio fell into the hands of Cuban journalist Wilfredo Cancio in 2006, based in Miami and at the time a reporter covering Cuban affairs for El Nuevo Herald. Castro had assumed the presidency of Cuba a few days earlier, due to Fidel’s illness. Ten years prior, as Cuba’s Minister of Defense and head of the Armed Forces, he had admitted his responsibility for the attack on the planes in a meeting with journalists from the island.

Cancio verified the recording with several specialists and with Alcibiades Hidalgo, who was Castro’s personal secretary. It was his voice. On August 20, 2006, he published an exclusive report that garnered worldwide media attention. “What changes with this recording is that there is now voice evidence of Raúl Castro assuming full responsibility,” the journalist told EL PAÍS, adding that he sees the planned indictment as “an act of historical justice.” When asked if the FBI had contacted him at any point regarding the investigation, he declined to comment.

The case of the downing of the planes has followed the course of events dictated by South Florida politics. “In the 1990s, there were formal charges and accusations that were dropped by the Bill Clinton administration, which was difficult for the families of the four men killed to accept,” Iglesias recounts. Two years after the recording was made public, it was once again put on hold with Barack Obama’s arrival at the White House and the diplomatic rapprochement between the two countries. Castro not only visited the United Nations headquarters in New York but also hosted the Democrat for a two-day stay in the Cuban capital. Former spy Gerardo Hernández, linked to the attack on the planes, was sentenced in the United States to life imprisonment and then sent to Cuba in 2014 as part of a prisoner exchange.

Republicans, for their part, have called for Castro’s head: Rick Scott, former governor of Florida, and the current governor, Ron DeSantis, are demanding that the Justice Department file charges. CBS News broke the news about Castro’s possible prosecution on the same day that the CIA director arrived in Havana last week. “Everything that is being done is a form of pressure on Cuba and a symbolic act of justice, albeit belated, but justice nonetheless. There is pressure in Congress and in the community to prosecute Raúl and Fidel as those responsible for the crime,” Cancio comments. “The fact that accountability is being discussed again today sends an important message: state crimes do not simply disappear with the passage of time.”

In 1996, Fidel himself said that he was the one who gave the order that small planes could no longer fly over Cuban airspace to drop leaflets, as they had done before. “They had a general order not to allow it… They acted with full awareness that they were following orders… I take responsibility for that,” the late leader said. However, the leaked audio shows that the order was actually given by his brother Raúl.

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