Admin Preps to Seek Castro Indictment  05/20 06:14

   

   MIAMI (AP) -- The Justice Department is preparing to seek an indictment 
against former Cuban President Ral Castro, three people familiar with the 
matter told The Associated Press on Friday, as President Donald Trump threatens 
possible military action against the communist-run island.

   One of the people told the AP that the potential indictment is connected to 
Castro's alleged role in the 1996 shootdown of two planes operated by the 
Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue. Castro was defense minister at 
the time.

   All three people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't 
authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation. The Cuban government did not 
respond to a request for comment on the potential indictment, which was 
reported earlier by CBS.

   Any criminal charge against Castro, which would need to be approved by a 
grand jury, would dramatically escalate tensions with Havana and ramp up 
expectations of U.S. military action in Cuba like the one carried out in 
January in Venezuela to bring President Nicols Maduro to New York on drug 
trafficking charges.

   Following Maduro's ouster, the Trump administration quickly turned its 
attention to his ally Cuba and ordered an economic blockade that choked off 
fuel shipments to Cuba, leading to severe blackouts, food shortages and a 
collapse in economic activity across the island.

   Iran war gave Cuba a breather

   The U.S. war in Iran appeared to have given Cuban leaders something of a 
reprieve from U.S. talk of regime change.

   As Trump seeks to wind down that conflict, speculation has been growing that 
he may soon turn his attention back to Cuba after pledging earlier this year a 
"friendly takeover" of the country if its leadership didn't open up its economy 
to American investment and kick out U.S. adversaries.

   Richard Feinberg, a professor emeritus specializing in Latin America at the 
University of California-San Diego, said that any indictment of Castro will 
play well with voters in south Florida but is unlikely to persuade career war 
planners in the Pentagon to pursue a second war of choice -- this time just 90 
miles from Florida.

   "There's no easy Venezuela copy," said Feinberg. "There's no clear line of 
succession and it's hard to imagine regime change without U.S. boots on the 
ground."

   The AP reported in March that the U.S. Attorney in Miami had created a 
special working group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement to build cases 
against top Cuban officials amid calls by several south Florida Republicans to 
reopen its investigation into Castro's alleged role in the 1996 shootdown.

   Trump calls Cuba 'a declining country'

   Trump declined to discuss a potential indictment on Friday, deferring to the 
Justice Department.

   "But they need help, as you know, and you talk about a declining country -- 
they are really a nation or a country in decline, so we're going to see," Trump 
told reporters aboard Air Force One. "We have a lot to talk about on Cuba, but 
not maybe for today."

   CIA Director John Ratcliffe met with Cuban officials, including Castro's 
grandson, during a high-level visit to the island on Thursday.

   Castro, 94, took over as president from his ailing brother, Fidel Castro, in 
2006, and then handed power to a handpicked loyalist, Miguel Daz-Canel, in 
2018.

   While he largely has avoided the spotlight since retiring in 2021 as head of 
the Cuban Communist Party, he is widely believed to wield power behind the 
scenes, a fact underscored by the prominence of his grandson, Ral Guillermo 
Rodrguez Castro, who previously met secretly with U.S. Secretary of State 
Marco Rubio.

   Florida straits shootdown a watershed moment in Cuba-U.S. relations

   Cuba's shootdown in 1996 of two Cessna aircraft operated by the Brothers to 
the Rescue was a watershed moment in decades of hostilities between the two 
countries.

   At the time, President Bill Clinton had been cautiously exploring ways to 
reduce tensions with a Cold War adversary but faced stiff opposition from 
exiles who organized publicity-seeking flyovers of Havana, dropping anti-Castro 
leaflets, and aiding Cuban rafters fleeing economic deprivation and 
single-party rule.

   The Cubans had warned the U.S. government for months that it was prepared to 
defend against what it considered deliberate provocations. But those calls went 
unheeded and on Feb. 24, 1996, missiles fired by Russian-made MiG-29 fighter 
jets downed two unarmed civilian Cessna planes just beyond Cuba's airspace, 
according to an investigation conducted by the International Civil Aviation 
Organization. A third plane, carrying the organization's leader, narrowly 
escaped.

   "With hindsight, it appears the Castros' motive was to slow down the Clinton 
outreach because they needed the U.S. as an external enemy to justify their 
national security posture," said Richard Fienberg, who worked on Cuban issues 
at the National Security Council at the time.

   They succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, said Feinberg.

   Shortly after the shootdown, Congress passed what became known as the 
Helms-Burton Act, which codified a U.S. trade embargo enacted in 1962 and made 
it far more complicated for successive U.S. presidents to engage with Cuba.

   To date, the U.S. has convicted only a single person of conspiracy to commit 
murder in connection with the Brothers to the Rescue shootdown. Gerardo 
Hernndez, the leader of a Cuban espionage ring dismantled by the FBI in the 
1990s, was sentenced to life in prison but was released by President Barack 
Obama during a prisoner swap in 2014 as part of an attempt to normalize 
relations with Cuba.

   Two fighter jet pilots and their commanding officer have also been indicted 
but are outside the reach of U.S. law enforcement while living in Cuba.

   Castro previously investigated for drug trafficking

   Castro has been under U.S. criminal investigation before. In 1993, federal 
prosecutors in Miami considered charging him and several other senior Cuban 
military officials with cocaine trafficking based on testimony from Colombian 
traffickers that emerged in the drug trial of former Panamanian leader Manuel 
Noriega, the AP reported in 2006.

   But an indictment never followed amid concerns about the witness' 
credibility as well as fears that it could risk U.S. intelligence operations 
and derail Clinton's tentative outreach.