Florida has opened a second front against Raúl Castro. A Miami judge has signed a state arrest warrant charging the 95-year-old former Cuban leader with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder over the Feb. 24, 1996 shootdown of two unarmed Brothers to the Rescue planes, in which four men were killed. Chief Judge Ariana Fajardo Orshan of the 11th Judicial Circuit signed the no-bond warrant on Friday, and Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, whose office reopened the state investigation after he took office, announced it on Monday morning at a press conference at Florida International University. The warrant directs law enforcement to arrest Castro and authorizes the state to seek his extradition if he is found outside Florida.
The state case rests on what happened in Florida before the planes went down. According to the affidavit, Cuban intelligence agents infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue, the Miami-based exile group, in Miami and Key West, gathering information on its flight operations and passing it to Havana to prepare the attack — activity that investigators say gives Florida jurisdiction. The spy network told its informants not to fly with the group between Feb. 24 and 27, 1996, and one informant left Florida and returned to Cuba on Feb. 23, the day before the shootdown. The plan, investigators allege, traveled up the chain of command to Raúl Castro, then Cuba's defense minister and head of its armed forces, and his brother Fidel as the final decision-makers, and the affidavit quotes Castro's own recorded words from months after the shootdown, recounting the orders he gave his generals: "I made it clear that this had to be decentralized if we wanted it to do its job, and five generals were given the authority... shoot them down at sea when they show up, and those who have the authority are not to consult anyone." "(There is) probable cause to believe the defendant, Raul Modesto Castro Ruz, agreed with others to commit first-degree murder of persons aboard the Brothers to the Rescue aircraft," the affidavit reads, and the warrant states: "The deaths of Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña, and Armando Alejandre Jr. were the object of that conspiracy."
"No matter who you are, no matter what title you hold — and no matter how much time has passed." — Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, on pursuing those who kill Americans
On the day itself, Cuban fighter jets shot down two Cessna 337s over the Florida Straits. Cuba claimed the planes were in its airspace and called the action self-defense; the United States said they were over international waters, a position the International Civil Aviation Organization later supported. The four men killed — Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre Jr. and Mario de la Peña, all U.S. citizens, and Pablo Morales, a legal permanent resident — were flying with a group known for searching for Cuban rafters at sea. Their bodies were never recovered.
The state warrant follows a federal case that arrived first. On May 20, the Justice Department indicted Castro and five former Cuban military officers on seven counts, including four counts of murder, destruction of aircraft, and conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals, and Castro has since been treated as a fugitive from federal justice. Only one defendant is in American custody: Luis Raúl González-Pardo Rodríguez, a former lieutenant colonel in the Cuban Air Force, who was extradited to Miami in June and has pleaded not guilty.
Nobody expects Cuban authorities to hand over a 95-year-old Castro, who remains in Cuba, and a capture while he stays there is highly unlikely. But the dual track is the point: after three decades, the same shootdown is now being prosecuted at both the federal and state level, and if Castro ever sets foot anywhere Florida can reach, the state's warrant will be waiting.
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