The 65-year-old former Cuban Air Force fighter pilot pleaded guilty to covering up his past to U.S. immigration officials.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A former Cuban Air Force fighter pilot indicted alongside former Cuban dictator Raul Castro in the 1996 shoot down of three civilian aircraft from the U.S. was sentenced in federal court in Jacksonville Thursday on an unrelated case.
Luis Raul Gonzalez-Pardo Rodriguez, 65, was sentenced to seven months in federal prison Thursday after he pleaded guilty to fraud and misuse of visa after making a false statement to U.S. immigration officials.
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The charge stems from Rodriguez’s 2017 visa application, in which he stated he never served in the Cuban military. According to the 2025 indictment, Rodriguez stated on his application he never received weapons training or military-type training, had never been a member of any militant group, and had never been a member of any military or police unit.
Rodriguez served as a fighter pilot in the Cuban Revolutionary Air and Air Defense Force between 1980 and 2009.
Rodriguez pleaded guilty to the fraud charge on Feb. 4, 2026, and was sentenced Thursday in federal court in Jacksonville.
Rodriguez’s involvement with Raul Castro
On May 20, 2026, the Department of Justice announced they unsealed a 2003 superseding indictment charging former Cuban dictator Raul Castro with murder and conspiracy for the 1996 shoot-down of three humanitarian aircraft from the U.S.
Rodriguez is named as a co-defendant in the indictment, charged with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals.
According to the indictment, Castro, who was Cuba’s vice president and minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces under older brother Fidel at the time, ordered the attack against aircraft belonging to the Miami-based humanitarian organization Brothers to the Rescue (BTTR), also known as Hermanos al Rescate.
The organization flew humanitarian missions over Cuba in the 1990s, including dropping leaflets over Cuba containing excerpts from the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
On Feb. 24, 1996, three BTTR aircraft took off from South Florida toward Cuba. The indictment states Cuban fighter jets under Castro’s command fired air-to-air missiles at two of the unarmed Cessna aircraft in international airspace, destroying them and killing four U.S. nationals.
The indictment states Rodriguez participated in training exercises in the weeks beforehand, including exercises designed to locate and intercept slow-moving civilian aircraft in his MiG fighter jet.
According to the indictment, Rodriguez was in his aircraft on standby at a Cuban air force base when the attack occurred, later ordered to take off in pursuit of the third BTTR aircraft, with the intent to shoot it down.
The fighter pilot who the DOJ says shot down the two planes, Lorenzo Alberto Perez-Perez, is charged with four counts of murder and two counts of destruction of aircraft in the indictment.
The indictment was filed in August, 2003 and unsealed May 20, 2026. It’s the first time a leader of Fidel Castro’s regime has been charged in the U.S. for crimes resulting in the deaths of U.S. nationals.
At this time, there are no pending hearings in the case, according to federal court records.