MIAMI \u2014 Miami\u2019s Freedom Tower has been a beacon of hope and freedom for members of South Florida\u2019s Cuban American exile community.<\/p>\n
Leer en espa\u00f1ol<\/a><\/p>\n Amid rising tensions between Cuba<\/a> and the United States, the Department of Justice announced an indictment against Cuban communist leader Raul Castro<\/a>. <\/p>\n \u201cIt sends the right message, not only to us, but to the opposition inside Cuba,\u201d said Miami-Dade Commissioner Juan Carlos Bermudez. <\/p>\n The indictment comes in connection with the deadly Brothers to the Rescue plane shootdown in 1996.<\/p>\n \u201cThat massacre is an open wound in this community because four young, idealistic men who were known for their hard work and their seriousness were killed for trying to save the lives of others,\u201d said Orlando Gutierrez-Boronat with the Assembly of the Cuban Resistance. <\/p>\n According to Brothers to the Rescue founder Jose Basulto, audio recordings of Raul Castro, who was then head of Cuba\u2019s military, show him ordering the attack on the humanitarian group\u2019s planes as they searched to help Cubans at sea fleeing the communist island.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were attacked by Cuban MiGs,\u201d said Basulto.<\/p>\n A MiG is a Soviet-designed Mikoyan-Gurevich fighter jet. <\/p>\n \u201cIt means a lot to me as a Cuban American because justice will finally be done,\u201d said Bermudez, who was friends with Mario De La Pena, one of the four men killed in the Cuban attack. <\/p>\n \u201cDied at a very young age, 25 years old,\u201d said Bermudez. \u201cIt was a crime committed by the Cuban government.\u201d<\/p>\n The indictment comes as Cuban democracy advocates remain steadfast in their decades-long quest for transition in Cuba from dictatorship to democracy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe indictment is a very important step, but of course the end goal here is the return of sovereignty to the Cuban people,\u201d said Gutierrez-Boronat. <\/p>\n \ud83c\udfe0 News From Your Neighborhood<\/p>\n Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MIAMI \u2014 Miami\u2019s Freedom Tower has been a beacon of hope and freedom for members of South Florida\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-278598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}