Earlier today, he described Cuba as a “rogue state harbouring hostile foreign military” and said his administration’s actions were part of a broader effort to expand US influence in the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n
“From the shores of Havana to the banks of the Panama Canal, we will drive out the forces of lawlessness and crime and foreign encroachment,” Mr Trump said at a Coast Guard Academy event in New London, Connecticut.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Cuba’s President Miguel Diaz-Canel said that the island did not represent a threat.<\/p>\n
The indictment marks a new low in relations between the longtime Cold War rivals.<\/p>\n
After taking power, Fidel Castro struck an alliance with the Soviet Union and seized US-owned businesses and properties.<\/p>\n
Since then, Washington has maintained an economic embargo on Cuba, a country with a population of about 10 million.<\/p>\n
The two sides have talked intermittently over the years. Diplomatic relations briefly improved during the second term of former president Barack Obama, a Democrat, but President Trump, a Republican, has taken a harder line.<\/p>\n
![\"Todd](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/0024660d-614.jpg\"\/)
\nActing US Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed the charges against Ra\u00fal Castro<\/p>\n
Members of Miami’s large Cuban American community gathered outside the city’s Freedom Tower ahead of the ceremony to the victims of the 1996 incident.<\/p>\n
The event took place on the anniversary of the end of a four-year US military occupation of Cuba on 20 May 1902, which itself followed centuries of Spanish colonial rule.<\/p>\n
Cuba’s government does not consider the date to mark the country’s independence day, arguing that it remained subservient to Washington until the 1959 revolution.<\/p>\n
In a post on social media, President Diaz-Canel said that, in Cuban history, 20 May signified “intervention, interference, dispossession, frustration”.<\/p>\n
Under Mr Trump, the US has effectively imposed a blockade on the island by threatening sanctions on countries supplying it with fuel, triggering power outages and exacerbating its worst crisis in decades.<\/p>\n
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered $100 million (\u20ac86m) in aid to Cuba and blamed its leaders for shortages of electricity, food and fuel.<\/p>\n
The island’s foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez described the move as cynical, citing the “devastating effect” of the economic blockade.<\/p>\n
Trump warned that Cuba was ‘next’<\/p>\n
Born in 1931, Ra\u00fal Castro was a key figure alongside his older brother in the guerrilla war that toppled US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.<\/p>\n
He helped defeat the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and served as defence minister for decades.<\/p>\n
Ra\u00fal succeeded his brother as president in 2008 and stepped down in 2018, but remains a powerful behind-the-scenes figure in Cuban politics.<\/p>\n
He was defence minister at the time of the 1996 incident.<\/p>\n
The two small planes that were shot down were being flown by Brothers to the Rescue, a group of Miami-based Cuban exile pilots who said their mission was to search for Cuban rafters fleeing the island.<\/p>\n
All four men aboard were killed. Portraits of them were displayed behind Mr Blanche as he spoke in Miami’s Freedom Tower, which served as a refugee centre for Cubans in the 1960s.<\/p>\n
The Cuban government has argued the strike was a legitimate response to the planes intruding on its airspace.<\/p>\n
Fidel Castro said the island’s military had acted on “standing orders” to down planes entering the airspace.<\/p>\n
He said that Ra\u00fal Castro did \u2060not give a specific order to shoot the planes.<\/p>\n
The US condemned the attack and imposed sanctions.<\/p>\n
The Department of Justice charged three Cuban military officers in 2003 but they were never extradited.<\/p>\n
The International Civil Aviation Organization later concluded that the incident took place over international waters.<\/p>\n
The filing of the criminal case against a US adversary like Ra\u00fal Castro recalls the earlier drug-trafficking indictment of imprisoned former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro, an ally of Cuba.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration cited that indictment as a justification for the 3 January raid on Caracas by the US military in which Mr Maduro was captured and brought to New York to face the charges.<\/p>\n
He has pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n
In March, President Trump threatened that Cuba was “next” after Venezuela.<\/p>\n
President Diaz-Canel said on Monday that any US military action against Cuba would lead to a “bloodbath”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Cuban president Ra\u00fal Castro has been charged in the United States with murder in a major escalation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459252,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-459251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459251\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}