Florida Charges Raúl Castro With Murder in the 1996 Brothers to the Rescue Shootdown. Late Justice Is Still Justice.
Florida has secured an arrest warrant charging Raúl Castro with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the 1996 shootdown of two Brothers to the Rescue planes.
The facts come first below. My opinion follows in the section marked as opinion.
Thirty years after Cuban fighter jets shot two small civilian planes out of the sky, Florida has charged the man it says gave the order.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier announced Monday that the state has secured an arrest warrant for former Cuban leader Raúl Castro. The warrant charges him with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder in the Feb. 24, 1996, shootdown of two unarmed Brothers to the Rescue aircraft over international waters, according to a release from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Chief Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan of Miami-Dade's Eleventh Judicial Circuit signed the warrant and ordered no bond.
What the state alleges
Four men died: Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña and Armando Alejandre Jr. Brothers to the Rescue was a Miami-based civilian group that flew over the Florida Straits looking for refugees fleeing Cuba by sea. Three of the four men killed were American citizens and the fourth was a legal permanent resident, the Miami Herald reported.
According to the state's affidavit, as summarized by the FDLE, Castro was then Cuba's minister of the armed forces and first vice president, and he was a final decision-maker in the chain of command that authorized the attack. The affidavit quotes standing orders he gave senior military leaders: "Fine, shoot them down at sea when they show up, and those who have the authority are not to consult anyone."
The state says Cuban intelligence agents of the so-called Wasp Network, working in Miami-Dade and Monroe counties, infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue and passed along its flight plans. On the day of the attack, three unarmed Cessnas left Opa-Locka Airport. After the planes crossed the 24th parallel heading south, well outside Cuba's territorial waters, Cuban MiGs destroyed two of them with air-to-air missiles. The state says both planes were flying away from Cuba and got no warning. Because the alleged spying happened in Florida, the state says it has jurisdiction.
The state charge follows a federal indictment. A grand jury in Miami charged Castro on May 20 along with five others, alleged to be pilots in the operation, NBC 6 South Florida reported. The federal counts include four counts of murder. Castro, now 95, succeeded his brother Fidel as Cuba's president in 2008 and gave up the Communist Party's top post in 2021.
Symbolic, and political
Castro lives in Cuba, and the Herald noted that a warrant from a Florida judge does not force any other country to arrest or extradite him. That would depend on the other country's laws, any extradition arrangement and help from federal authorities.
Uthmeier argued the state case still matters. "If you have a Communist sympathizer that ends up back in the White House, they cannot pardon, they cannot commute, they cannot immunize these dictators from our state proceedings," he said at the news conference, according to the Herald. "Raúl Castro ordered the murder of four Floridians in cold blood," he said in the FDLE release. U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones said federal prosecutors are "proud to stand with Florida."
Opinion: Late justice is still justice
Some will call this theater. Castro is 95 and will almost certainly never see a Florida courtroom. Uthmeier also took a partisan swing about some future "Communist sympathizer" in the White House, and he should have left that out. Four families' grief is not a campaign prop.
But a charge on the record is not nothing. It says, in the name of the people of Florida, that four men flying a mercy mission over open water were murdered, and it names the man the state believes is responsible. When Cain killed his brother, the Lord told him, "the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground." Blood shed in 1996 still cries out.
Scripture also explains why delay is dangerous: "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." A regime that has gone 30 years without answering for this has had little reason to change. Washington is wrestling with the same problem a quarter-century after Sept. 11, as Dock Line noted in Supreme Court Rejects 9/11 Mastermind's Bid to Revive Plea Deal.
Earthly courts may never reach Raúl Castro. Another court will. Until then, the least we can do is say the names: Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña and Armando Alejandre Jr.
