Just as expected, the US has charged former Cuban leader Raúl Castro with conspiracy to kill US nationals and other crimes over the 1996 downing of two planes between Cuba and Florida.
The case unveiled on Wednesday accuses Castro and five others in the shooting down of the aircraft belonging to Cuban-American group Brothers to the Rescue and killing four people, including three Americans.
Castro, now 94, was then head of the country’s armed forces and faced international condemnation over the crash.
As the US seeks to exert increasing pressure on Cuba’s communist rule, President Miguel Díaz-Canel called the charges “a political manoeuvre, devoid of any legal foundation”.
Speaking at Freedom Tower in Miami, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the US would also charge Castro with destruction of aircraft, and four individual counts of murder over the deaths of Armando Alejandre Jr, Carlos Alberto Costa, Mario Manuel de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.
“The United States, and President Trump, does not, and will not, forget its citizens,” Blanche said.
The charges must be argued in a US court, with some carrying the possibility life terms. The murder charges each carry a maximum penalty of death or life imprisonment.
The justice department’s new charges take aim at a key figurehead of Cuba’s communist leadership when it is facing intense US pressure to make significant political and economic reforms to its one-party rule there.
“I think the strategy is to increase the pressure gradually to the point where the Cuban government will give in and surrender at the bargaining table,” said Wiliam LeoGrand, a expert on Latin American politics at American University.
The US has issued sanctions on the country and imposed a blockade on oil to Cuba that has resulted in blackouts and food shortages.
Earlier on Wednesday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a message to the Cuban people timed to the country’s independence day.
“President Trump is offering a new path between the US and a new Cuba,” Rubio said.
Rubio told citizens of the island that a Cuban military run conglomerate known as GAESA is primarily responsible for the blackouts and food shortages that the country continues to endure.
GAESA owns or operates most of the lucrative parts of the Cuban economy from the ports to the petrol pumps to five-star hotels.
In response to Rubio’s message, Díaz-Canel accused the US of lying and imposing a collective punishment on the Cuban people.
