DOJ pushing to indict Raúl Castro over 1996 downing of civilian planes, officials say

The Justice Department is pushing to indict Raúl Castro, 94, Cuba’s former president, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

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One of the officials says the criminal action involves two civilian planes on a voluntary mission that were shot down by Cuba in 1996. Four Americans of Cuban origin were killed.

The law enforcement effort against Castro, the brother of Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, comes as President Donald Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the Cuban government’s ability to maintain its grip on the island despite months of sustained pressure from the United States, NBC News reported.

NBC News reached out to the Cuban Foreign Ministry in Havana and the island’s embassy in Washington, D.C., for comment and did not immediately receive a response.

Protests have erupted on the island amid fuel shortages and power outages, as U.S. sanctions choke off essential supplies and a surprise military operation ousted Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, neutralizing a key ally.

Yet the Cuban regime has shown no signs of ceding power or offering major concessions as demanded by Washington.

President Donald Trump, aboard Air Force One returning from a trip to China on Friday, said the Castro investigation was a Justice Department matter.

“You talk about a country in decline, it’s actually a nation or a country in decline,” Trump said. “Then we’ll see.”

Trump administration leaders have stepped up their efforts in recent weeks. CIA Director John Ratcliffe was in Havana on Thursday to meet with Cuban officials, according to an agency official and a Cuban government statement.

According to a statement from its Communist Party, Cuba provided the United States with information that “categorically demonstrated that Cuba does not pose a threat to the national security of the United States, nor are there legitimate reasons to include it on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism.”

The Trump administration began studying earlier this year whether federal prosecutors could charge members of the regime or the Communist Party with crimes, NBC News reported. The multi-agency effort is led by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.

Federal prosecutors are actively working the case, but it is not yet clear whether it has been submitted to a grand jury, which will determine whether to indict Castro. The possible indictment was first reported by CBS News.

The 1996 plane shootdown remains one of the most politically charged episodes in modern U.S.-Cuba relations.

Volunteers regularly flew across the Florida Straits in search of Cuban refugees heading to the United States on makeshift boats.

Fidel Castro, then president, claimed the planes had violated Cuban airspace and were shot down to defend against “terrorist threats.” Raúl Castro was then head of the armed forces.

Congress later found that the pilots were “flying unarmed and defenseless aircraft on a mission identical to the hundreds they have flown since 1991 and posed no threat to the Cuban government, the Cuban military, or the Cuban people.”

The matter remains a sensitive point. Cuban-American members of Congress wrote a letter to Trump in February asking the Justice Department to consider charging Raúl Castro for the plane shootings.