Florida Obtains Murder-Conspiracy Arrest Warrant for Raúl Castro Over 1996 Brothers to the Rescue Shootdown

MIAMI (TodayViralUSA) — Florida has obtained a state arrest warrant for former Cuban leader Raúl Castro, accusing him of conspiring to commit first-degree murder in the 1996 downing of two unarmed civilian planes flown by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue, which killed four men.

The no-bond warrant, signed Friday by Ariana Fajardo Orshan, chief judge of Florida’s 11th Judicial Circuit in Miami-Dade County, found probable cause that Castro conspired in the killings, according to copies of the warrant and supporting affidavit obtained by the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times and Fox News. It directs law enforcement to arrest him immediately.

Attorney General James Uthmeier, whose office opened a state criminal investigation into Castro in March, and Gov. Ron DeSantis were scheduled to announce the warrant at a news conference in Miami on Monday.

A second set of charges

The state case adds to a federal prosecution announced in May, when the Justice Department charged Castro, now 95, with murder and conspiracy over the shootdown. He was head of Cuba’s armed forces at the time of the attack. Before this year, the closest U.S. authorities had come to charging Cuba’s leadership was a 2003 federal indictment of a Cuban general and two fighter pilots, the Herald reported.

The warrant names the four men killed on Feb. 24, 1996: Carlos Costa, Pablo Morales, Mario de la Peña and Armando Alejandre Jr. Three were U.S. citizens and one was a legal permanent resident.

“The investigation revealed evidence of a conspiracy to kill persons aboard BTTR aircraft,” the warrant states.

Why Florida claims jurisdiction

According to the affidavit, Florida’s case rests on the activities of two Cuban spies in Miami and Key West who had infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue. In the weeks before the shootdown, the operatives allegedly reported on the naval air station in Key West and were instructed to pass the group’s flight information to Cuban authorities. The affidavit says the spy network told its informants not to fly with the group between Feb. 24 and 27, and that one of them left Florida for Cuba on Feb. 23.

Investigators allege the plan to shoot down the aircraft moved through the chain of command of Cuba’s foreign intelligence service, with Raúl Castro and his late brother, Fidel Castro, as the final decision-makers. The warrant quotes a recorded statement Raúl Castro made months after the attack in which he described ordering commanders to shoot the planes down at sea and said those with authority “are not to consult anyone.”

Cuba’s position

Brothers to the Rescue flew missions searching for Cuban migrants lost at sea and, by the mid-1990s, had also dropped pro-democracy leaflets over the island. Havana has long maintained that the group repeatedly violated Cuban airspace and that it acted to defend its sovereignty. The United States and a United Nations investigation concluded that the planes were shot down over international waters.

The warrant authorizes Florida to seek Castro’s extradition if he is arrested in another U.S. jurisdiction, and the attorney general’s Office of Statewide Prosecution will take over the case.