Miguel Diaz-Canel, President of Cuba and First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, marches with Army General Raul Castro, PCC cadres and thousands of Cubans against the US blockade, December 2024 (photo: Cuban Presidency)
On 20 May, the US Department of Justice indicted Raúl Castro, historic leader of the Cuban Revolution and former President of the Republic, as well as other Cuban current and former leaders. This baseless, politically manufactured charge represents a brazen escalation in the long-running US campaign against socialist Cuba.
Announced by US Attorney General Todd Blanche, the indictment on murder and conspiracy charges relates to the 1996 downing of two aircraft which violated Cuban airspace,
operated by the counter-revolutionary Miami-based terrorist organisation 'Brothers to the Rescue’.
The US is recycling its thoroughly discredited narrative around the incident nearly thirty years after the fact for purely ideological purposes.
Castro’s indictment is part of a campaign by US imperialism to prepare the ground for a military attack. It follows the US kidnapping of Venezuelan President Maduro and the unprovoked US-Israeli bombing of Iran. US President Donald Trump has made repeated threats to ‘take’ Cuba.
The timing of the US announcement exposes the political intent. The Union of Young Communists (UJC) had just announced plans to commemorate Raúl Castro’s 95th birthday, reaffirming its commitment to socialism and the revolution’s historic leadership. Hours later, the indictment by a Grand Jury convened in Miami, the heart of the right-wing Cuban exile movement, was announced.
In response, the UJC made clear that “young Cubans will not allow our history to be manipulated” and denounced Brothers to the Rescue as a ‘terrorist organisation’ responsible for repeated violations of Cuban airspace and hostility against the island. The statement powerfully reasserts the UJC’s unwavering commitment to defending the Revolution, rejecting historical distortion and reaffirming continuity with its historic leadership in the face of renewed political attack. This latest offensive in the US’s war on Cuba reveals a calculated attempt to strike at revolutionary continuity precisely at a moment it is being strengthened and reaffirmed.
The legal basis of the case is fundamentally dishonest. Under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter and established international law, every sovereign state has the inherent right to defend its territory, including its airspace, against unlawful incursions.
The 1996 downing of the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft occurred only after Cuba had exhausted diplomatic channels with the US government, as a last resort in response to repeated and deliberate violations of Cuban sovereignty.
Between 1994 and February 1996, Cuban authorities recorded more than 25 systematic incursions into Cuban airspace by aircraft linked to Brothers to the Rescue as they waged a flagrant propaganda offensive, dropping leaflets over Havana inciting Cubans to overthrow their government. All were formally reported to US authorities, the Federal Aviation Administration and the International Civil Aviation Organisation. Despite having both the authority and obligation to intervene, these institutions failed to prevent the continued violations.
Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel condemned the indictment as a political act driven by frustration at the ‘unbreakable firmness of the Cuban Revolution,’ exposing the hypocrisy of US authorities accusing Cuba while pursuing a long record of invasion, sabotage, blockade and extrajudicial violence against other states.
Since 1959, the US imperialism has pursued a strategy of invasion, sabotage and destabilisation against the Cuban Revolution: the CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961; Operation Mongoose’s coordinated campaign of bombings and assassination attempts and the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, killing 73 civilians. This is alongside decades of economic warfare through the blockade, designed to strangle and collapse the Cuban economy.
Since the first Trump administration of 2017-2021, this pressure has been deepened through tighter sanctions, financial coercion and renewed efforts to isolate Cuba internationally. These measures have deepened Cuba’s economic crisis, tightening shortages of fuel, food, medicine and basic goods and pushing the Cuban people into worsening conditions of deprivation.
The indictment marks a further escalation in this trajectory of political warfare aimed at undermining the legitimacy of the revolution itself.
What is unfolding is a coordinated attempt to weaken and ultimately destroy Cuban socialism. By targeting one of its central revolutionary leaders, the US is not revisiting history - it is actively reshaping the present to prepare the ground for future aggression. This escalation must be opposed.
The RCG rejects the indictment and will continue to fight back against the long-running imperialist campaign of blockade, destabilisation and political warfare against socialist Cuba.