By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The United States has charged former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, 94 with conspiracy to kill US nationals and other crimes, in connection with the downing of two planes between Cuba and Florida in 1996.
The case unveiled on Wednesday is a revival of charges originally from 2003, accusing Castro and five others of involvement in the shooting down of an aircraft belonging to Cuban American group Brothers to the Rescue and killing four persons, including three Americans.
Castro, was the country’s head of armed forces at that time and faced international condemnation over the crash.
Cuba’s President, Miguel Díaz-Canel has reacted to the charges, calling it “a political manoeuvre, devoid of any legal foundation”, as the US seeks to exert increasing pressure on Cuba’s communist rule
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 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,” Wiliam LeoGrand, a expert on Latin American politics at American University said.
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, coinciding with 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 5-star hotels.
In response to Rubio’s message, Díaz-Canel accused the US of lying and imposing a collective punishment on the Cuban people.
Díaz-Canel also said that the indictment of Castro was being used to “justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba” and accused the US of distorting the facts around the downing of the plane.
He claimed that Cuba acted in “legitimate self-defence within its jurisdictional waters”.
Asked by reporters about the prospects of bringing Castro to the US to face charges, Blanche responded that there was a warrant for his arrest.
“We expect he will show up here, by his own will or another way,” he said.
Nearly 95 years old, Castro remains an influential figure, acknowledged on the island as the surviving “leader of the Cuban Revolution”.
He has relinquished his active government and party roles, but during his 2008-2018 presidency, he and former US president Barack Obama presided over a short-lived thaw in Washington-Havana relations.
