(BBC News) The US has charged former Cuban leader Raúl Castro with conspiracy to kill US nationals and other crimes over the 1996 downing of two planes between Cuba and Florida.
The case unveiled on Wednesday accuses Castro and five others in the shooting down of the aircraft belonging to Cuban-American group Brothers to the Rescue and killing four people, including three Americans.
Castro, now 94, was then head of the country’s armed forces and faced international condemnation over the crash.
As the US seeks to exert increasing pressure on Cuba’s communist rule, President Miguel Díaz-Canel called the charges “a political manoeuvre, devoid of any legal foundation”.
Speaking at Freedom Tower in Miami, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announced that the US would also charge Castro with destruction of aircraft, and four individual counts of murder over the deaths of Armando Alejandre Jr, Carlos Alberto Costa, Mario Manuel de la Peña, and Pablo Morales.
“The United States, and President Trump, does not, and will not, forget its citizens,” Blanche said.
The charges must be argued in a US court, with some carrying the possibility life terms. Each murder charge carries a maximum penalty of death or life imprisonment.
The justice department’s new charges take aim at a key figurehead of Cuba’s communist leadership when it is facing intense US pressure to make significant political and economic reforms to its one-party rule there.
