The Justice Department announced charges on Wednesday against Ra\u00fal Castro, the 94-year-old former president of Cuba, accusing him of murder and a conspiracy to kill American citizens stemming from the fatal downing 30 years ago of two planes over waters off the coast of his country.<\/p>\n
The indictment<\/a>, issued in Federal District Court in Miami, was an extraordinary escalation of the Trump administration\u2019s multifaceted pressure campaign against Cuba\u2019s Communist government at a moment when President Trump has been seeking to topple it.<\/p>\n The charges brought to bear on Mr. Castro, the brother of Fidel Castro, the vast powers of the U.S. criminal justice system, saddling him with a possible maximum penalty of life in prison. They also raised the possibility that the United States could be paving the way for its military to remove him from the country through a means similar to how U.S. Special Operations forces used an indictment against Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, the former leader of Venezuela, to swoop into Caracas in a brazen operation<\/a> in January and capture him.<\/p>\n The indictment, which also accused five fighter pilots involved in the attack on the planes, was secretly returned last month by a federal grand jury and built on earlier charges, first filed in 2003, against one of them.<\/p>\n At a news conference in Miami, the acting attorney general, Todd Blanche, and Jason A. Reding Qui\u00f1ones, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, accused Mr. Castro and the pilots of killing four people when the Cuban military shot down the planes on the afternoon of Feb. 24, 1996. The planes were operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a Cuban exile group that often scoured the seas for Cubans fleeing the country.<\/p>\n Fidel Castro took responsibility for downing the planes shortly after they were brought from the sky, claiming that the organization had been dropping anti-regime leaflets over Havana in earlier flights. The indictment said that Ra\u00fal Castro was also responsible because he and his brother were \u201cthe final decision makers\u201d in the Cuban military chain of command.<\/p>\n Mr. Blanche portrayed the charges against Mr. Castro as a historic step toward holding the leaders of Cuba\u2019s government accountable for its past wrongs.<\/p>\n \u201cMy message today is clear,\u201d he said. \u201cThe United States and President Trump does not \u2014 and will not \u2014 forget its citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Blanche sidestepped questions about whether the indictment was a prelude to U.S. military action, saying that the decision rested with Mr. Trump and his foreign policy team. Mr. Trump himself refused to say on Wednesday whether he would use the military to extract Mr. Castro from Cuba, telling reporters, \u201cI don\u2019t want to say that.\u201d<\/p>\n Beyond military force, however, there were not many options to get Mr. Castro to the United States to face charges. Mr. Blanche said that a warrant had been issued for his arrest, though it was unlikely that the Cubans would turn him over. In a telling statement, Mr. Blanche nonetheless said he expected Mr. Castro to show up in the United States eventually whether \u201cby his own will or another way.\u201d<\/p>\n In an interview, Ernesto Sober\u00f3n Guzm\u00e1n, Cuba\u2019s ambassador to the United Nations, warned that the charges appeared to be an attempt by the Trump administration to create a pretext for military action against Cuba.<\/p>\n \u201cI cannot call it another word than a circus \u2014 a circus they are now mounting as one more action to justify military aggression against Cuba,\u201d Mr. Guzm\u00e1n said.<\/p>\n Since retaking office, President Trump has made no secret of his desire to expand U.S. territory<\/a> and oust leaders he dislikes. After the successful military operation in Venezuela and the so far unsuccessful efforts to secure Greenland or the Panama Canal, Mr. Trump has made it clear that Cuba is his next target.<\/p>\n Cuba is facing a moment of rising crisis as the country\u2019s oil supplies for domestic use and power plants have been exhausted after Mr. Trump effectively imposed a blockade on fuel shipments from any country. On Wednesday, the aircraft carrier Nimitz and its escort warships entered the southern Caribbean Sea, where it is expected to remain for at least a few days, according to the military\u2019s Southern Command and a U.S. official.<\/p>\n The indictment also followed an unusual visit by John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director, who met with senior Cuban officials, including Mr. Castro\u2019s grandson, about a week ago. In the talks, he warned the government that it had to make economic changes and stop allowing Russia and China to operate intelligence posts on its soil.<\/p>\n In the 30 years since the planes were downed, Cuban American lawmakers, exile activists, survivors of the episode and family members of the victims have called for Ra\u00fal Castro, who was the minister of defense at the time, to be criminally charged. But Mr. Blanche had little to say when asked by reporters why an indictment in the case had been returned now.<\/p>\n